Milton Reeves

Milton Othello Reeves (1864 to 1925) was an early American pioneer of the automobile industry who held more than 100 patents. Born on a farm in Rush County, Indiana, he worked in 1879 in a sawmill in Columbus, noticed that the workers could not control the speed of the pulleys that powered the saws, and after months of study and experimentation invented a variable-speed transmission to control it. In 1888 he and his brothers bought the Edinburg Pulley Company and renamed it the Reeves Pulley Company, and in 1896 he adapted the transmission to a motocycle with a belt and pulley based variable speed drive, which he is credited as building as the fourth or fifth American automobile. In 1897 he lodged a patent for a double muffler, an industry first, and through the 1900s he built engines and cars, founding the Reeves Sexto-Octo Company in 1911 and producing the eight-wheeled Octo-Auto. His vehicles were not very successful, but his variable speed transmission and muffler were, and the transmission stayed in production at the Reeves Pulley Company until 1955.