Crypto

Crypto's automobile history grew from a much older London cycle and gearing concern and must be separated from several unrelated uses of the word. The Science Museum dates Crypto Cycle Company Limited to 1882 and identifies William Thomas Shaw and William Sydenham with the patented epicyclic hub mechanism known as the Crypto gear. The firm's front-driven ordinary and safety cycles included the distinctive Bantam, represented by a museum example built in 1893. Corporate chronologies place limited liability in 1888 and a change to Crypto Works Company Limited in 1896; those dates describe the cycle and engineering ancestry, not the beginning of four-wheel car production. William Gilbert James became closely associated with the works around the turn of the century. Crypto supplied Lawson-designed motor tricycles in 1901, but contract manufacture does not turn those Lawson vehicles into Crypto models. Its own powered range began with motor bicycles and broadly reported Peugeot- or MMC-engined forecars in 1902. The recoverable 1902 accounts do not identify an exact forecar type, rating, independent chassis or catalog name, so that claim is preserved in the history without creating a conjectural automobile row. The first fully specifiable Crypto passenger road vehicle is the new 3½ hp Tri-car shown in November 1903. Two examples used dedicated large-diameter tubular three-wheel chassis, differential steering, long flat-belt drive, 2½-inch rear tyres and expanding metal-to-metal band brakes on the two front wheels. Both carried two riders. One combined an MMC engine and two-speed Crypto epicyclic gear with a coachbuilt bucket body; the other used a basket or upholstered-cane body. Contemporary magazines placed these machines in motorcycle-show reporting, but they were purpose-built passenger tricars rather than detachable forecarriages, so the single mechanical family qualifies for the road-vehicle catalog. The distinct four-wheel car business was organized in 1904. A July Motor-Car Journal notice records that James acquired from Crypto Works Company the right to use Crypto on cycles, motorcycles and motorcars and took the former Weston Motor Company premises at 14 Mortimer Street, London W. The period operating name was Crypto Car and Cycle Company. Complete Crypto cars and motorcycles were handled by that department, while James's separate personal department acted as exclusive British, Irish and colonial agent for Paul Dupressoir of Maubeuge. Dupressoir offered armoured-wood chassis and components from 6 to 14 hp. This contemporary division matters: it disproves the idea that every Dupressoir chassis James imported automatically became a Crypto, and it leaves the common later name Crypto Engineering Company as an unverified reference-book alias rather than a second manufacturer. The first documented four-wheel Crypto photograph, published in September 1904, shows James on his 14 hp car. The best specified smaller model followed at the Stanley Show. Crypto displayed an 8 hp rolling chassis described as one of a series supplied to carriage builders, then a later issue pictured the complete car with a Cape cart hood. It had a wood-and-steel frame, front-mounted De Dion-Bouton single, three forward speeds and reverse with direct top, cardan shaft and bevel drive to a live rear axle, expanding metal brakes and an 8 ft 6 in wheelbase. A. Hudden's hill-climb entry supplies the 100 x 120 mm cylinder dimensions, approximately 943 cc, and a reported 1,500 rpm. Eight-horsepower cars continued in club use through 1906, including an example driven by E. E. Bentall, but later competition appearances prove surviving use rather than fresh production. Crypto's larger original car is retained as one 10/12 hp twin-cylinder family, not split into 10, 12 and 14 hp duplicates. The reason is unusually strong owner-linked period evidence. In April 1905 E. T. Pryor's Crypto was listed at 12 hp and W. Whittall's at 10 hp; only three weeks later Pryor's same car was called 14 hp. James's 1904 14 hp caption therefore fits the period's variable nominal reporting. A May 1905 press-observed test calls the vehicle an ordinary stock 10–12 hp two-cylinder Crypto. Whittall drove it 1,027 miles over six days on routes from London to Holyhead Road, Worthing, Salisbury and Devizes, Littleport, Warwick and Coventry, and Clacton. A loose circulating-pump union caused its only mechanical interruption, and one sparking plug broke; no tyre or replacement-parts trouble was reported. Later marque encyclopedias attribute the twin to Tony Huber, but the recovered Crypto-specific period report names no supplier and publishes no bore, stroke or displacement, so the catalog qualifies that attribution. Dorking Motor Garage became a Crypto-car agent in August 1905, proving an attempted retail network beyond Mortimer Street. The final car was mechanically distinct. At the November 1905 Stanley Show Crypto displayed Dupressoir chassis samples and a new British-built two-cylinder Bentall engine rated about 10 hp. Period reports describe a component display, not yet a completed customer car. In April 1906 James and W. Whittall showed a Dupressoir light chassis fitted with the 8–10 hp Bentall twin. Its compact design used a composite case-hardened and ground crankshaft, a camshaft placed close to the crank, centrally located low-tension ignition with simple advance and retard adjustment, removable ignition parts that retained their settings, padded moving pieces and splash lubrication. An October 1906 hill-climb photograph explicitly captions James on an 8–10 hp Crypto Car, closing the chain from engine and chassis to a complete branded automobile. That evidence supports a 1905–06 model span while distinguishing late-1905 components from the assembled and running 1906 car. No Crypto car offer, new model or manufacture is recovered after 1906. Standard histories variously say regular car production ended in 1905 or 1906; the complete 1906 Bentall/Dupressoir car resolves the inclusive endpoint but does not prove series volume. The resulting catalog has four defensible road-vehicle identities: the 1903 purpose-built 3½ HP Tri-car, 1904–05 8 HP, one 1904–05 10/12 HP twin encompassing period 10–14 hp ratings, and 1905–06 8/10 HP Bentall/Dupressoir. No factory total, chassis ledger or reliable survivor census is known for any of them. Crypto also maintained a substantial two-wheel business. Its 1904 show included a 4 hp Antoine motorcycle; in 1905 it acquired the agency, name and goodwill associated with Belgian Kelecom motorcycles; and later Crypto singles, twins and a 5 hp four-cylinder machine continued into 1908 or 1909. Those motorcycles remain outside an automobile catalog. So do the earlier Lawson contract tricycles, Kelecom-badged products, accumulator-charging dynamos and transformers, and cars by Benz, Liver, Maxwell, Oldsmobile, Lanchester and other makers that merely used a Crypto epicyclic gear. Crypto Electrical Company and the later Lancashire Dynamo & Crypto concern were electrical-equipment businesses, not continuations of the car marque. Bentall, De Dion-Bouton, Dupressoir and Tony Huber retain their own vehicle inventories even when they supplied Crypto. The end of automobile manufacture was not the legal disappearance often implied by a 1908 reference-book date. Crypto Car and Cycle Company still wrote from 14 Mortimer Street in 1908 and advertised engine valves under James's proprietorship by 1917. The business later became W. G. James Limited and continued in automotive components for decades. That successor history explains the surviving trade name without extending Crypto automobile production beyond 1906.

Text adapted from “Crypto” on Wikipedia ↗ · CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗