Chicago (Chicago Motocycle Company)

Charles Dickinson—whose surname is also printed as Dickenson—L. F. Douglass (or Douglas) and Henry B. Babson organized the Chicago Motocycle Company late in 1898 at 107 Madison Street, Chicago. The deliberately period spelling 'Motocycle' appears in specialist histories, while sources and Wikidata also use Motorcycle. The founders announced gasoline, electric and steam automobiles, but the company initially functioned only as a workshop and none of the electric or steam plans reached documented vehicle production. Its first automobile appeared in 1902 under the Chicago badge: an open two-seater with a folding top and an otherwise unspecified two-cylinder gasoline engine. No proper model name, horsepower, displacement, transmission, wheelbase, price or output count survives, so the database uses the transparent Two-Cylinder Automobile label. In 1903 the firm changed its automobile marque to Caloric and offered three more fully differentiated models; after an August 1904 combination with Auto Motor Cycle Company it presented one Fostler runabout in 1905 and then abandoned vehicles for boat engines. Workshop activity continued for an uncertain period. This Chicago badge is explicitly qualified in the catalog because it has no corporate relationship to Chicago Motor Vehicle Company's earlier contest and commercial cars or to the many later Chicago-named electric, steam, buggy and cyclecar ventures. One row accounts for its complete documented range.

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