After a short search they decided to contract the development to one of the few engine builders in the area, New York's Stephen M. Balzer.
Balzer was a Hungarian immigrant who had a mechanical bent and started designing various devices while working in the watch repair department in Tiffany's.
Balzer was convinced he could build an engine to Langley's requirements by scaling up his existing design into a larger five-cylinder one.
The resulting design weighed 120 lb (54 kg), and delivered 52 hp (39 kW), making it by far the most powerful lightweight engine of its era, far outperforming the one that would eventually be successful on the Wright Flyer.
In 1914 Glenn Curtiss used the engine in the heavily modified Aerodrome in an effort to break the Wright brothers aircraft control system patent.
Years later the Smithsonian Institution asked Manly for a monograph about the engine, and he wrote an account that significantly downplayed Balzer's contribution, reducing it to supplying a non-working design that he rebuilt.