“GENIUS IS ONE PERCENT INSPIRATION
AND NINETY-NINE PERCENT PERSPIRATION.”
Thomas A. Edison
That Tom Edison was good for a good comment, especially from a man who worked a lot of other’s ideas and let them do the perspiration. If you don’t know the real story of Mr. Edison you really ought to do some more reading beyond what the standard fare is in school.
If you recognize the old broadcast to alert all police officer on their new fangled radios (calling all cars) you are really dating yourself. But the broadcast was to get the attention of all police units on the street that something bad was happening or that everyone needed to pay attention to what was about to be said.
What I need to CALL ALL OF YOU is that there is a really great story that I want to put into my next book. Yes by the time you see this the committee will be back on the go ahead to publish KANSAS ODDITIES 2: Sinkhole Sam, Iola’s Mad Bomber, and Pelican Pete.
In my September Issue of Farm Collector is another story of an inventor that worked on a self propelled combine. This one I had never heard of. In the Nineteens and 20’s there was an inventor in Hutchinson by the name of George W. White. He had a machine shop on South Main in Hutchinson as well as a fully equipped machine shop that just worked on his own inventions. His business name was George White and Sons Machine shop.
Leslie C McManus (Farm Collector Editor) wrote the story of the inventions of Mr. White. The GET IT ALL harvester was in development during WWI and he filed patents and worked on getting the harvester functioning. The war put a hold on the development of a special wheel that he had invented. Other machine shops and tractor companies tried to buy the rights to his wheel but he would never sell it. He had a devil of a time getting it from wooden pattern to functioning steel wheel.
Finding information of this man and his story has been a real challenge. I am anxious to solve the puzzle and get it into the next book. I have done the Hines Combine story and the K.O. Huff self propelled story. I still have more stories to find and write.
Leslie has the same request that I am putting out here. Is there a GET IT ALL combine out there that still exists? This is just one more Kansas item that I need YOU THE READER to help out with. There are buildings, hedge rows, fence rows, junk piles, and collectors who have things that need to be identified and restored so that the history is more than a story on paper.
Let me list the things that I am hoping to find: White’s GET IT ALL combine, Hockett/Sterling tractor, Sellers 35 Automobile, Walterschied automobile, Clouhley automobile, Colby Plow Boy tractor, Charles & Alexander Glass Steam car, Lark Aircraft, Moniter Haypress, Currie Windmill, Pugh Potato Digger, Kansas City Haypress, and the Jayhawk tractor. There is a patent on a Sellers tractor and a George White motor plow that no one knows if they were actually built.
Any of these things if you know about or know where they exist please contact me. If there is any other Kansas story that I have not found contact me.
[email protected] or 1374 NE Goldenrod, Medicine Lodge, KS. 67104
