Oscar Zerk
AUTOMOTIVEPIONEERS
BY DAVID CONWILL
IMAGE COURTESY OF THE
U.S. PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICEODDS ARE, IF YOU’VE EVER DONE BASIC MAINTENANCE
on your old car, you’ve used a grease gun to pump highly
viscous petroleum lubricant into the various joints and bearings
of the chassis and drivetrain—maybe even some of the hinge
points in the body. Equally likely, you think of the fi ttings where
the grease gun attaches as “Zerk fi ttings.” But have you ever
stopped to ask yourself where they got that name?
The answer, as you have likely concluded, is from Oscar
Zerk. He was a brilliant inventor born May 16, 1878, in Vienna,
capital of what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His
father, Bernhard Zerkowitz, was in the business of textile manu-
facturing, and the family had been prominent and respected
since the time of the Holy Roman Empire.
While still a teenager, the German-educated Zerk invented
an electrically controlled loom that used punch cards to weave
intricate brocade fabric. This early form of automation allowed
one machine to do the work of a dozen people.
Remarkably, the clever young Zerk was initially rejected
from pursuing higher education. It took the direct intervention
of Emperor Franz Josef for Zerk to be admitted to engineering
college in what is now Brno, Czech Republic.
After graduation, Zerk relocated to England to study British
textile manufacturing and to refi ne his automated loom. After
four years abroad, he returned to Austria at age 27. It was then
that the emerging automobile industry caught his eye. Soon, he
had designed both a six-cylinder engine and proposed a form of
automatic transmission.
Apparently impressed by reports of the steam cars of the
White Motor Company, in 1907 Zerk arranged to visit the
United States to study one fi rsthand. He sailed for America
aboard the RMS Lusitania, and it was during this voyage that he
was inspired to improve the system of lubrication then in use on
automobiles—grease cups and oilers.
Zerk’s trip to the U.S. turned from investigation to business,
when he founded a company in Cleveland to produce an early
version of what became the familiar Zerk fi tting. While he was
not the fi rst to envision forcing grease under pressure into joints
and bearings, his designs were very good. Unfortunately, Zerk’s
business acumen did not yet match his engineering prowess and
in 1913, he was forced out by his investors.
The start of the Great War found Zerk visiting his home in
Austria and he was compelled to join the fi ghting, mustering out
in 1918 as a decorated army captain. He married a local girl
and the pair returned to the United States, where he became
involved in the Allyne-Zerk Company.
In 1924, Allyne-Zerk was purchased by Stewart-Warner,
which also owned Alemite, a market leader in lubrication tech-
nology (“Alemite” actually became a verb meaning “to lubri-
cate” for a while in the 1930s), and Zerk became a stockholder
and consulting engineer. In 1929, Zerk created a refi ned version
of his lubrication nipple and assigned the patent to Alemite. He
also led a well-publicized “housecleaning” of Stewart-Warner
management in 1934, forcing the company to concentrate on
its core automotive business instead of diversifying.Zerk pulled back from business somewhat in 1939, moving
from the hustle and bustle of Chicago to Kenosha, Wisconsin,
where he heavily remodeled a mansion. He dubbed his new
residence “Dunmovin” and resided there until his death in- Along the way, he registered many more patents (he had
over 300 in his lifetime), which represented only a part of his
prolifi c output of inventions.
Although he was married a total of four times, Zerk had no
children, but his name lives on in the eponymous grease fi tting.
Something to think about next time you change your oil and
lube the chassis.
18 HEMMINGS CLASSIC CAR OCTOBER 2019 I Hemmings.com