In 1877 or '78 Benjamin Brazelle established the Brazelle Balance Valve & Automatic Cut Off Steam Engine Co., better known as the Brazelle Engine Co., to manufacture steam engines, slide valves, and steam engine governors of his own patented designs. He continued to refine his designs, adding pumping engines to his product line. The business seems to have been relatively short-lived, possibly not surviving past the early 1880s. By 1891 Brazelle's patent governor was being manufactured by Mid-Continent Manufacturing Co. of St. Louis.

Brazelle continued to patent a series of interesting inventions, including improved governors, steam boilers, and fuel-gas manufacturing processes. In 1892 he patented a process for producing hot-blast steel and pig iron, and then announced that he was establishing the Brazelle Iron & Steel Co. to further develop and use his process. This effort was still-born and no such company was registered.

In the 1890s Brazelle claimed to have proved that gold was not an element but rather was a composition of two other substances. He also claimed that gold was a living substance and, under the right conditions, could be induced to grow. He also said that he could readily transmute silver to gold and then back again. The most charitable interpretation of these claims was that Brazelle was unschooled in chemistry and physics, although he titled himself a scientist and inventor.

In 1906-07 Brazelle worked for a St. Louis company that produced wire rope, the A. Leschen & Sons Rope Co. Brazelle was hired to develop products that would expand Leschen's market for their wire rope, such as in oil, gas and water wells. Brazelle patented a series of such improvements, the patents being assigned to Leschen.

In 1912 Brazelle was granted a pair of internal-combustion engine patents, his innovations intended to reduce problems associated with high exhaust-gas temperature. The patents were assigned to the newly created Brazelle Motor Co. In fact, Brazelle had earlier signed a deal with the Leschen company to give them half the patent rights in exchange for funding the engine development. After the patents were granted with no rights assigned to Leschen, the Leschen company sued Brazelle. The outcome of the lawsuit is unknown, although we do know that the Missouri Court of Appeals rejected Brazelle's claim that he did not have to produce a certain document because the only copy was in possession of his attorney and was therefore privileged. The Brazelle Motor Co. may have been a legal fiction for the purposes of keeping the patents' ownership at arm's length from Brazelle. These two engine patents plus the corporate registration are the only evidence that Brazelle Motor Co. ever existed.

Also around this time, Brazelle developed pneumatic motors for use in rock drills and other applications, although we find no evidence that these ideas ever reached production.

By the early 1920s Brazelle was living in Los Angeles and was inventing and manufacturing quack medicines. He was involved with, and was probably the founder and owner of, Aquazone Laboratories, Inc, of Los Angeles. Brazelle designed and patented a process to produce highly oxygenated water, "Aquazone", that was purported to destroy bacteria and "toxins". He also produces a compound, "Zorine", for treating skin diseases, ulcers, tonsillitis, catarrh, etc.

Information Sources

• 1878 and 1880 patents were assigned to the Brazelle Engine Co.
• 1883-11-2 St. Louis Post-Dispatch: ">..The Brazelle Manufacturing Company of St. Louis also filed corporation papers. Capital $25,000."
• 1883-12-08 American Machinist: "The Brazelle Manufacturing Company, St. Louis, have started up a machine shop on North Second Street, for the manufacture of small specialties, among which will be a steam pump of a new design."
• 1893-02-25 The Age of Steel article on the Brazelle Iron and Steel Company, which would "shortly be incorporated to work the Brazelle hot blast steel and pig iron process... After incorporation and organization the first step of the parties interested will be, so we are informed, the erection of a plant with a capacity of 25 tons of steel per day, to demonstrate the feasibility and merits of the process. Mr. Brazelle, after whom the process takes its name, lives at 2201 Eugenia Street, this city, and is the inventor of the Brazelle engine governor and an open-hearth process for making muck bar and steel, using oil and gas as fuel. Patents for the latter invention are still pending."
• February 1897 Western Druggist has a news item on Benjamin Brazelle of St. Louis, who was claiming to be able to transmute silver into gold and a "company backed by strong capital has begun the erection of a plant at Fairlawn, St. Louis, to test Mr. Brazelle's discoveries."
• A pair of 1912 patents were assigned to the Brazelle Motor Co.
• A 1912 lawsuit heard by the Courts of Appeals of the State of Missouri, Henry Leschen v. Benjamin Brazelle, heard 1912-03-05. The summary of the case says that, "in 1907 plaintiff entered into a contract with [Brazelle] touching a new style internal combustion engine, the invention and patenting of which the defendant then had in mind." The plaintiff was suing for a half-interest in each of patents 1,022,177 and 1,022,178. Brazelle acknowledged such an agreement but said that Leschen subsequently withdrew from the deal and "refused to furnish the financial aid agreed upon". There were three prototype engines, with engines 1 and 2 corresponding to patent 1,022,177 and engine 3 to patent 1,022,178. Brazelle was ordered to produce the application for what became the latter patent but refused to do so claiming that it was in the possession of his attorney and was therefor privileged. The court did not accept this argument, saying that if it is not privileged in the defendant's hands then it cannot "be made privileged by defendant's placing it in the possession of his counsel". (The arguments were somewhat subtle, involving the paper versus the information on it and the original versus a carbon copy, but none of the subtleties affect the decision.) This decision went to the Court of Appeals, which is what we linked to, above. We do not know the outcome of the underlying lawsuit.
• 1917 Gould's Red Book: Business Directory and Commercial Register of St. Louis lists "Brazelle Motor Co Benjamin Brazelle pres J C Porter vice-pres and treas 314, 408 Olive". 408 Olive was the "Merchants-Laclede Building" with dozens of tenants. "Brazelle Benjamin & Son mech engrs" were listed at 2115A Arsenal. The other part of 2115 Arsenal was the physician's office, Dr. George W. Becker.
• The 1919 book, The Complete Works of Brann, the Iconoclast has a section that mocks Benjamin Brazelle for claiming to have separated gold into two component parts and thus proving it is not a "primary metal", i.e., an element. He apparently also claimed he could produce gold and silver from clay. That section of the book was apparently written about 1898.
• 1921-02-12 Los Angeles Herald has a classified ad: "ZORINE. A proved scientific treatment for Skin Diseases, Ulcers, Eczema. Poison Oak, Pyorrhea, Piles, Tonsillitis, Stings, Catarrah, Cuts and Burns; compounded by Benjamin Brazelle, a Scientist, who also invented and discovered the curative properties of the now famous Oxygen Water, "AQUAZONE." ZORINE has proved to be as wonderful in result as AQUAZONE. Price: $2 per bottle. Write BENJAMIN BRAZELLE, 1941 LOVELACE AV., Los Angeles, Cal. Phone 28256."
• Missouri Register lists companies, past and present, registered in Missouri, including The Brazelle Balance Valve and Automatic Cut Off Steam Engine Co. (number 1045), the Brazelle Manufacturing Company (1883, number 2344), and the Brazelle Motor Company (number 26,662). The registration numbers suggest that they were registered in that order, with the first company considerably predating the others. There is no information in their database on these companies other than the registration numbers and the company names. The dates are taken from other sources as listed elsewhere in this "Information Sources".
• The Complete Guide to Stationary Gas Engines by Mark Meincke, 1996 page 100