Old technology kept alive by local club – turn of the century machines on display at the Fair

September 23, 2013 · 0 Comments

If you think that finely tuned engine under the hood of your car just happened roll off the assembly line after some fine engineering, you’d be wrong.

It took a couple of centuries of fine tuning technology and slow advances that gives you the opportunity to cruise down the highway at 100 kph with little effort.

The High County Antique Power Club is a locally based group that maintains and shows some of the early powered equipment that began the evolution of farming from a horse-powered operation to a farm based on engines with mechanical horsepower.

The club brought some of their well preserved equipment to the Shelburne Fall Fair to give people an opportunity to see how farm life has change over the past century.

There was a farm tractor, circa 1908, a manually operated grain grinder, a really old corn sheller dating back to 1889, and a single piston water pump dating to 1936.

Club member Earl Dodds brought with him a display that is very simple in design, and yet when it was installed in his family’s farm house in 1905, was probably the talk of the county and most likely many people came to the farm to take a look.

Indeed, the Dodds farm located on the 5th Line in Mono was the first in the region to have a supply of running water to the second floor of the house – and it was all based a simple, yet very effective gravity fed design.

“My grandfather installed this in 1905,” Dodds explained. “It requires no maintenance and no energy.”

Called a hydrolic ram water pump, the pump takes water from the source – a creek or stream – then uses a single valve that shuts off and on due to the water pressure, to allow water into the pump. The water pressure forces water through a pipe to the destination.

“A reservoir tank goes in the attic, and the overflow went to the barn and was used to water the cattle,” Dodds said.

Since the pump worked continuously, it didn’t shut off when the tank was full, so an overflow system allowed excess water to go to the barn. On the other side, if you suddenly used a lot of water you would have to wait for the tank to fill up again.

The system was very simple, yet very effective. You just need a water source and the pump would have to be installed at least three feet lower than the water supply. From there, gravity took over.

“We were pumping a distance of 400 feet,” Dodds said. “But it will go a lot farther than that. It will pump up to a mile or more.”

That pump was in constant operation for 63 years until the house was upgraded in the 1960’s.

A check in the Sears 1905 catalogue listed a price of $4.50 for a hydrolic pump.

While club members have an interest in all this old equipment, Dodds said younger people don’t seem to be impressed by the old technology. But he hopes that in time, younger people will come to appreciate the machines that brought early power to farms and businesses.

By Brian Lockhart