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Title: |
1904 Article-M. V. Cummings, 1868 Steam Traction Engine |
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Source: |
The Threshermen's Review, Sep 1904, pg. 20 & Scientific American, 19 Jul 1873, pg. 34 |
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Insert Date: |
4/3/2014 8:03:06 PM |
I will send you a photograph under separate cover of a traction engine built by M. V. Cummings in the year 1869 which you can publish if you wish to. There were three U. S. patents out on this traction engine; one on the traction part, one on the engine part, and the other on the mowing sickle attachment.
The engine was eight h. p. It had an upright boiler and it was a double cylinder with the cylinders on the back. The engine run a Nichols & Shepard separator, 28-inch cylinder, of the 1865 pattern and the outfit threshed successfully for several years in Henry county, Ill. This was the first traction engine that ever hauled a separator, to the best of the inventor’s knowledge. At least, he never saw or heard of any other at that time. Five years later, in 1873, it was published in the Scientific American and a full description given of it, which was taken from this photograph. I have also another photograph taken of the engine, which shows a side view, and also the separator, but I can’t find it at present, or I would send it along, too. If this photograph is too faded for your engraver to get a good picture out of it, I can send you the Scientific American, which has a good picture, not so faded. It also gives a full description of the engine. - You can publish this, if you want to.
Hoping this letter and the picture will reach you all right, I am,
A. B. Cummings.
Some issues back, we published an engraving and description of the Hayes steam reaper, an agricultural invention of considerable merit recently introduced in England. The article attracted the notice of a correspondent, Mr. Marcellus V. Cummings of Geneseo, Henry County, Illinois, who has lately forwarded to us the facts, embodied in the following description and illustrated in the annexed engraving, relative to a machine of similar description, invented and patented by him (May 12 1868) over five years ago, which, he informs us, is now in actual and successful use in the above mentioned locality. Our illustration from a photograph, will convey an excellent idea of its appearance and construction. The boiler is thirty-one inches in diameter by five feet in length, and is of tubular pattern. There are two steam cylinders, each four by eight inches, together with a water tank holding five barrels of water, and coal bunkers containing five bushels of coal. The large driving wheels are five feet in diameter and eight inches in tread; the front steering wheel, operated as shown, is four feet in diameter, with similar tread. The grass sickle cuts six feet four inches and the grain sickle nine feet six inches.
The inventor states that he drives his engine from farm to farm without the aid of horses, and that it traverses over plowed land, up hill or down, with the greatest ease. The rate of speed is about four miles per hour, and an acre of ground can be mown in twenty minutes. The grain thrashing machine is placed on a two wheeled carriage, which is coupled on behind the engine, and is thus hauled by the latter over country roads, from place to place, throughout whole counties. The entire weight of the apparatus is 4,200 lbs.
Judging from the facts transmitted to us, this invention appears of considerable importance and worthy of the attention of farmers having large tracts of land under cultivation. The patentee states that his means did not admit of his constructing more than one machine, by the aid of which, however, he has earned sufficient to build another. If, as he asserted and doubtless with truth, its advantages, both in itself and as a traction engine, are so extended, it amply deserves a reputation much wider than it has attained. |
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1904 M. V. Cummings, 1868 Steam Traction Engine
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