Robs discussion on my Springfield pix thread made me think again about the pix I took of the Darke County Steam Threshers event last summer.  I figured Id go ahead and post them as they are just so much fun.

 

And they actually are relevant to urbanization in Ohio and elsewhere in the Midwest, as it was the manufacturing of farm implements and machinery that played a part in the industrialization of the midwest...and industrialization often led to urbanization. 

 

That certainly was the case for Dayton as I've seen ads for "land locomotives" and also early illustrations of them, from Dayton city directories and a city atlas.  This was Springfields big buisness too.  And it was the case for a numbe of smaller and mid-sized midwest cities.

 

Starting out with a few Case engines.  Made in Racine Wisconisn.

 

 

 

...and, painted on one of the rear tanks, a great illustration of the Case factory in Racine...with a river port on Lake Michigan. Case imported its workforce from Denmark, and Racine has the largest Danish ancestry community in the US as a consequence:

 

 

An Advance engine, made in Battle Creek.

 

 

 

This engine was made in Richmond Indiana...

 

 

 

...as you can tell it takes quite a few parts to build one of these, requiring skills like molding, machine shop work in making the parts with some precision, as well as some engineering knowlege.  So the manufacture of these things helped midwestern citys develop "human capital", a workforce with technical skills that could be applied to other things, such as automobiles, gas enignes, parts, etc.....

 

A Minneapolis engine. I wonder if this company was the forerunner of Minneapolis-Moline?

 

 

This was neat..this old farm lady was running this engine.  It was made in Columbus, Indiana....

 

 

 

"land locomotives"

 

 

 

And some in action.

 

Starting out with a threshing operation...seperating the wheat from the chaff, I guess....

 

 

 

..connecting to the combine....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And another demonstration....this one to generate power.....

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As this draws people from all over the woods are sort of the campground and food/drink place...

 

 

 

 

...related organizations....

 

 

..and also demonstrations of smaller examples of labor saving machinery, such as motorized washing machines and water pumps and such.....

 

 

 

 

 

hmm...????.....

 

 

And this sawmill demonstration was sort of interesting.....

 

 

...interesting, you can see they have a tensioning wheel for the "big rubber band" (belts are probably really out of leather)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

..another Case enigne...

 

 

product, with power source in backround...

 

 

Then there was a good little tractor show, too....

 

..the big red one in the foreground is a "Massie-Harris", probably a forerunner of Massie-Ferguson:

 

 

Art Deco John Deere....

 

 

"Sweet Allis-Chalmers"...made in Milwaulkee, West Allis...

 

 

 

Minneapolis-Moline...I have a personal connection with this company as my grandfather worked there (at their St Paul plant) back when he was in Wisconsin..he'd come back to work on the farm on weekends but lived in St Paul during the week in a bording house...worked in MM machine shop...

 

 

And a few Oliver tractors.  Made in South Bend.  Before Studebaker and Bendix, the Oliver company was the big industry in South Bend.  The Oliver Mansion, Copshalom (and a workers house, to show how the other half lived),  is open for tours...a pretty good house museum.  But this is what they made, amoung other things (Oliver started out making plows)....they imported workers from Poland and Hungary...

 

 

...neat deco/streamlined design....

 

...the Midwest, famers, wheat, tractors (made in the Midwest):

 

And some farewell pix:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Good coverage, Jeff. I think this year's show is July 6 - 9.

 

Allow me to add some commentary; I'll try to not get carried away.

 

Case was the leading manufacturer of steam farm power. I think they built more engines than the next four competitors combined. Their reputation for quality, durability and customer support was unequalled in the industry. Full sized reproductions of the big factory decals are available.

 

Advance engines were another top contender for quality and widespread sales and support.

 

The Minneapolis engine was indeed a Minneapolis-Moline predecessor. I forget the complete genealogy, but there were several engine and tractor builders in the Minneapolis-St Paul area who got folded into the companies that evolved into Minneapolis-Moline, which was absorbed into White Industries in the sixties, I think.

 

The cart pulled by the Reeves engine is a tender; the semi-cylindrical wood-stave part is a water tank, and extra coal could be piled on top.

 

Yep, threshing separates grain from straw and chaff. The standing grain is cut and tied into bundles by a binder, and the bundles are gathered into shocks in the field to dry. The shocks are loaded onto a wagon and taken to a threshing machine for final processing; the grain comes out an auger on the side, and the straw and chaff come out a blower pipe at the rear.

 

The later, modern machine known as a combine was first introduced as a "combined harvester;" it performed the functions of both the binder and threshing machine, traveling across the field and cutting the standing grain, and threshing it as it went.

 

The trailer-mounted generator is used to test horsepower of a tractor or steam engine. The generator output is fed through a variable resistor bank to dissipate the energy as heat, and the current is measured. By calculating the electric power produced, the operator can determine the horsepower of the engine.

 

Reid two-cycle natural gas engine, probably about 25 horsepower, built around 1900. Reid engines were almost all used in oil fields to power the pumps that lifted the crude oil from the wells. They were extremely simple and reliable, and provided with a reliable cooling water supply and visited about once a day to fill lubricators, they could run in remote locations for months without being shut off.

 

Most belts used now to run threshers and sawmills are made of rubberized canvas. Leather was more common in the early days when power requirements were lower and leather was cheap and plentiful.

 

Tractor styling -- As the country started to climb out of the great depression in the late thirties, styling became a factor in marketing tractors. Previously, everything was purely functional and often primitive-looking. John Deere hired Henry Dreyfuss, Allis-Chalmers hired Brooks Stevens, and International Harvester (Farmall) hired Raymond Loewy. John Deere's time-honored low-speed two-cylinder engine gave it a distinctive galloping exhaust bark that carried for miles across open country.

 

In the fifties, Minneapolis-Moline, Oliver (both later absorbed by White Industries), John Deere and Case all kicked butt for rugged construction and durability. All were expensive, too. By the end of World War II, there really weren't any bad manufacturers still around, but those four impressed me the most.

 

Excellent show photos!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  Awesome photos. Thanks for posting.

 

 

Rob thanks for that back ground info on the pix and machinery.  I really appreciated that. 

 

Also, interesting facts on that tractor styling.  I guess it would figure that Brook Stevens did Allis-Chalmers' design as he was sort of the "house designer" for the big Milwaulkee concerns.  You probably know he was responsible for the Milwaulkee Road's crack Hiawatha streamliner.  He also did things like the Evinrude outboard motor cowling, the Miller High-Life logo, and the Oscar Myer Weinermobile.

 

 

... and the Harley Davidson motorcycle.

 

Stevens was quite the Milwaukee legend. When I visited the Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum I thought the window design overlooking the lake was reminiscent of the Hiawatha observation car tail end, and wondered if it was a subtle nod to Stevens.

Keep these types of threads coming.