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Advertisements for internal combustion engines, commonly called gas engines, appeared regularly in farm magazines in the mid-1890s. By the century's turn, one hundred US companies produced stationary or portable gas engines for farmers. Fifteen years later, the number of gas engines on farms had exploded to one million. The skills gained by hundreds of thou- sands of farmers with these engines facilitated the rapid adoption of the automobile on farms and the more gradual adoption of the tractor. Yet the use of such engines has received scant attention. This paper examines the farm demand for stationary power and compares alternative power sources in 1895. It traces the development of the market for farm gas engines and its interaction with the markets for automobiles and tractors. It then presents evidence from magazines to show how farmers became engine mechanics and facilitated the adoption of automobiles and tractors across rural America.
Automobile history scholars have long recognized that farmers' familiarity with gasoline engines contributed mightily to the successful introduction of Henry Ford's Model Τ in 1908. By 1920 both automo- biles and small farm gas engines were widespread on midwestern farms and tractors were few. Yet Deborah Fitzgerald's much admired Every Farm a Factory claimed that, "for most farmers, the tractor was their first brush with the internal combustion engine." Census data from 1920 and 1930 clarified long ago that automobiles on farms preceded tractors by more than a decade in every state. Nevertheless, Fitzgerald's vision of agricultural mechanization, begun with tractors and driven by off-farm forces in the 1920s, has many adherents.1
The story of the farm debut of the gasoline engine presented here contrasts sharply with that presented by Fitzgerald. In the first place, it begins with the appearance of the earliest farm gas engines and focuses on this neglected first stage of internal combustion engine use on the farm. It also recognizes farmers to be more intimately involved with the advent of engines, automobiles, and ultimately tractors on farms. Farmers adopted the technology willingly to fulfill a need or satisfy a demand. Moreover, the fact that many farmers owned gas engines before the Model Τ was introduced changed the path of the automobile; and the fact that nearly every farmer owned an automobile...