THE STEAM TRACTOR ENCYCLOPEDIA - EXPANDED EDITION - ISBN 978-1-59672-113-5

When the steam era came to North American farms a little over a decade before the Civil War, small factories that built threshing machines powered by steam engines began to spring up. While many shops soon faded from view, others expanded and eventually became large plants. Most of the first steamers for farms were equipped with wheels or skids and were pulled by horses. Steam traction engines later came with various drive trains that enabled them to pull themselves along the open road. Steamers mechanized agriculture, ensured population growth, and transformed the United States and Canada into contenders in world economic markets. In 1910, a Department of Agriculture survey found that 72,000 farm steam engines were in use in the United States. Until the first edition of The Steam Tractor Encyclopedia, no book had presented anything approaching a complete photographic record of agricultural steam engines in America. Dr. Robert T. Rhode is one of the world’s experts on steam engine history on the American farm, and John F. Spalding has one of the world’s largest collections of photographs of agricultural steam engines. Combining Rhode’s knowledge and Spalding’s photographs has resulted in an expanded edition of the most complete steam tractor encyclopedia in print in the United States or Canada. The new expanded edition of this popular encyclopedia features over 600 historical pictures of steam engines and provides the histories of over 80 companies that built farm steam engines in the United States and Canada. Included are portable engines and traction engines, which today are often called steam tractors. The book also has photos of hit and miss engines and antique gas tractors. The second edition is nearly twice as large as the first edition was. The book has been completely revised and has a totally new design. 400 pages © 2011