\nSeveral times on this program I have mentioned Waterville’s most famous invention, the Lombard Log Hauler, forerunner of the modern farm tractor and the war tank. The Lombard Hauler was the first successful caterpillar tread vehicle, and until 1917, when the rights expired, A.O.Lombard held a patent on the lagtread device, defending his rights successfully in the courts.<\/p>\n
What I did not know until this past summer was that, living nearby is a man who worked for the Lombard Company and its successor for more than thirty years, from 1919 until the factory closed in 1950. That man is Mr. Carroll Hamlin, who conducts in his retirement, a private machinist’s business in a shop attached to his home on Kelley Street in Fairfield. Mr. Hamlin has many momentoes of his Lombard days: photographs, drawings, articles and clippings, catalogues, and numerous machine parts.<\/p>\n
In the early 1920’s A.O. Lombard made it a practice to furnish 30 days free operational and repair service with each hauler he sold. At that time the enterprising woods operator, LaCroix, had begun his extensive lumber operations in the Allagash region and had decided to build a railroad to transport his logs overland 18 miles from Eagle to Chesuncook Lake. Because LaCroix bought several of the Lombard tractors, Mr. Hamlin was sent by Lombard to the Allagash, where he superintended hauling of locomotives, cars and rails over the logging road from Lac Frontiere to the Tramway. All the equipment was brought in by Lombard Hauler.<\/p>\n
At Clayton Lake the woods road branched off to the Tramway. This is the general area where, at Churchill Dam on July 19, 1970 the new Allagash Parkway was dedicated for perpetual recreational use. When a Lombard Hauler brought logs out of the woods, it handled a prodigious load. The biggest load Mr. Hamlin recalls was 305 tons of logs on twenty sleds, hauled by a Lombard tractor, totaling about 75 cords of pulpwood. He says that average load was 12 to 15 sleds,<\/p>\n
Although Mr. Hamlin did not personally see another famous load, he recalls the pride of all connected with the company when a Lombard tractor hauled 41,000 pounds of granite up a 20 percent grade at five miles an hour, without a single halt.<\/p>\n
During the years that Mr. Hamlin worked for Lombard, that famous caterpillar tread vehicle appeared in many parts of the world. One hundred were at a single time sold for lumber operations in Russia. A large order went to Mexico for mining and road building projects. In the Waterville shop was rushed through an order for seven specially designed tractors for rubber plantations in the Dutch East Indies.<\/p>\n
The company that Mr. Lombard headed was known as the Lombard Traction Engine Company. His first caterpillar tractor, perfected about 1900, was propelled by steam. About 1912 the fuel was changed to gasoline for an internal combustion engine.<\/p>\n
One item in Mr. Hamlin’s collection is a copy of Sun-Up Magazine for February, 1926. Sun-Up, a short lived publication of the 1920’s, before the coming of the now much more successful Down East, was called the Magazine of Maine, and was devoted to interests of the state, especially its industries.<\/p>\n
One article in that 1926 issue was entitled “Building Maine Mastodons”, and was the story of the Lombard Log Hauler. Accompanying the article were pictures of A.D. Lombard and of his first steam-powered, lag-bed tractor. Let us now have some quotations from that article: “Behind the story of the Lombard machine is the quiet, unassuming personality of A. O. Lombard, a rare, but wonderful specimen of the Maine Yankee inventor — the type that originates ideas, then sticks to them until they work out. Mr. Lombard’s workroom in his Waterville home is especially interesting. In it are pictures covering a half century of activity, not of what others have done, but of what this man has himself achieved.<\/p>\n
“Mr. Lombard was an early experimenter with automotive transportation. It was claimed for him, though sometimes disputed, that he built and drove the first horseless carriage in Maine. In 1896 he was in Massachusetts, where he put together his first auto, that looked like an incubator mounted on a cross between a wagon and a sleigh. The rear wheels were the drivers and were like carriage wheels of the time, high and with iron tires. In place of front wheels, the vehicle had sleigh runners for winter use. The engine was in a box over the rear axle, and a crude smokestack stuck through the top. The steering device was a straight arm on a pivot attached to the front axle.<\/p>\n
“In 1897 Mr. Lombard built an auto in which he and his wife toured Aroostook County, attracting much attention. The fuel was kerosene. He built another, with many improvements, in 1898, then abandoned auto construction to devote full time to lag-bed, caterpillar haulers.<\/p>\n
“One day Mr. Lombard was talking with a logging operator who was deeply concerned by the number of horses maimed or killed in woods operations. Lombard became determined to perfect a machine that would replace horses in the woods. The result was his caterpillar-tread hauler, soon popular in all the big lumber camps. The machine made its own roads through trees, swamps and streams, and made easy work of steep hills and ridges. Two heavy sled shoes were attached to the front when snow covered the ground, and four rear wheels connected by the caterpillar lag bed served as drivers.<\/p>\n
“The Lombard machine was of course the grandfather of the war tank and of caterpillar tractors in all parts of the world.<\/p>\n
“Lombard’s first invention was not concerned with transportation, but was a water wheel governor built on his father’s farm in 1888. It was so successful that it was used in the great generator wheels at Niagara Falls. He also invented machines to improve pulp manufacture, including an ingenious device to remove bark from the logs. Another of his machines sorted sawdust and knots from pulpwood chips.”<\/p>\n
Carroll Hamlin himself is an inventor. While with the Lombard Company he perfected the Lombard Automatic Hoist, a very useful device for heavy machinery. Before working for Lombard, Carroll Hamlin for several years operated a Waterville garage in partnership with Caleb Lewis, later editor of the Waterville Sentinel. It was called the Union Street Garage, and some of its accounts are revealing, not only of the low repair prices of those days, but also of who drove automobiles in Waterville in the year 1915. Lewis was the silent partner, the business man of the concern, devoting much of his time to selling cars. Hamlin was the mechanic, usually employing one or two assistants. For his own labor and that of his best assistant, Hamlin charged the then high price of 50 cents an hour. For lesser skilled helpers he charged 35 and 40 cents an hour. Since part of that went to the firm, the workmen probably received not more than 25 or 30 cents.<\/p>\n
The Hamlin-Lewis garage sold gas in the summer of 1915 for 16 cents a gallon. They charged 60 cents for greasing a car, 20 cents a quart for oil, 50 cents for vulcanizing an inner tube, and 10 cents for distilled water for the battery cells. Other charges were 35 cents for new headlight glass, one dollar for two spark plugs, 50 cents for a tire repair kit, 45 cents for a fan belt, $3.00 for a front spring, and $8.00 for a set of shock absorbers.<\/p>\n
Now let us see who were some of that garage’s customers. C.W. Hussey, the lawyer with the ornamental home and its mosaic sidewalk at the corner of College Avenue and Union Street, where the Goodhue filling station now stands, had a repair bill of $15.63 in the month of July. Merrill and Mayo, the feed and grain merchants on Front Street, paid the Hamlin garage $37 in that same month. Everett Wardwell, the dry goods merchant, had a bill of $7.67, and Dr. Percy Merrill got by with $1.32, and Dr. E.E. Goodrich spent even less on his car, $1.25. Norris Webber ran up a bill of $16.25, and the City Market spent $8.67 to keep its delivery truck on the streets.<\/p>\n
In August three car drivers had some big bills to pay at the Union Street Garage. Harold Kimball’s bill was $47.45. Harry Harmon’s was $65.56, and Fred Rose topped the lot with $68.66. Other customers of the Hamlin garage were W.E. Colby, the ice man; L.P. Loud. the shoe dealer; Piper Brothers, the Water Street merchants Fred Alden, Philip Meader and Howard Crosby.<\/p>\n
That same Sun-Up Magazine that contained an account of A.O. Lombard also had pictures and descriptions of automobiles common in the 1920’s. For $1,920 one could buy the deluxe hundred horse power Rickenbacker, guaranteed to go 90 miles an hour, if you could find any highway that would hold the car at that speed. By that time Stanley Steamers were no longer made, but in the Franklin a buyer could still find an air-cooled car. The most expensive car shown in that magazine was the Pierce Arrow Coach at $3,150, costing $250 more than the Cadillac seven passenger Imperial. The Pierce Arrow could be had in black with wheels and striping of vermilion red. or one could get it in sage green, cruising gray or bambalina blue.<\/p>\n
The Hudson Brougham was a popular car, priced at $1,570. The description said: “This car combines custom-built quality, individuality and smartness, at a price made possible by volume.” Another popular make was the Buick five passenger sedan. Dodge featured its business coupe. and boasted the most comfortable five passenger sedan. You could get an Essex two door coach for $900. Of course if you wanted a cheaper car, you could get a new Chevrolet, as indeed I did in that year 1926, for $650, a Model A Ford for about the same price. Model T’s were still on the road. original)y purchased for about $300.<\/p>\n
Now let us close this broadcast with reference to a booklet in Mr. Hamlin’s collection concerned with automobile valves. This is its warning to the car owner: “Good valve grinding jobs are sometimes ruined by too close tappet adjustment. improper timing, or poor carburetor adjustment. See that the man who does your job heeds these important points~”<\/p>\n
And with that we must say goodbye until next week.<\/p>\n
Year: 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Read the script for “Little Talks” program #862, Broadcast on October 11, 1970<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":405,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1205,35296],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/405"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9076"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9076\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/csc-home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}