That was a BIG clue: the Educator Steam Buggy!
In 1965 Richard J. Smith of Midway City, California designed and built a Speed Buggy primarily to demonstrate practical light steam power on a scale at which it would not only be achievable by the able amateur, but in a way that it would, by doing, teach the builder a great deal about the practical points of operating a steam power system. It was also a showcase for the deceptively simple and not previously very obvious method of direct mechanical control of the fuel and water by temperature and pressure, as described in Smith's patent.
Dick was spurred on in this work by Thomas P. Hall, publisher and editor of The Steam Calliope Magazine, "The Voice for Western Steam", started in 1965 as a regional publication of the Steam Automobile Club of America, but soon becoming Tom's proprietary publication. At this same time, Karl Petersen had left Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute with a graduate degree and, while working in Santa Monica, had sought out Tom Hall to find out what was hot in the steam car development field. Very soon he found Dick Smith and, in barter and appreciation for the generous tutorials Dick offered, participated in the final construction and demonstration of the Educator buggy and continued to work with Dick on steam car development, very soon a full time endeavor for both.
The Educator buggy had its first public outing at the Laguna Beach SACA meet in 1967, and was enroute to the Greensboro, North Carolina meet, in a trailer, when Dick, Karl, Carl Guth of Arizona, and the trailer were put off the road into an Alabama swamp by an errant motorist. The buggy was so thoroughly damaged, that the wrecked parts were dismantled.
