Patten Man Solves Navigation Problem
Mr. and Mrs. Harvey In Their Flivver Sled
PATTEN, March 26 Erastus L. Harvey of Patten has a new Invention, or, if he hasn't exactly a new Invention, he has combined several old ones with some original additions and put the net result to a new kind of work. The hyphenated compound or mixture or whatever you may call It has no name yet and so for lack of a better we will call It a "flivver-sled.
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The principal parts of the hybrid are taken from a rather well known make of motor car. In fact, the car Is encountered almost anywhere In summer; In the highway, In tote riads, In fields, In the ditch, In trees, up telephone poles, right side up and upside down It is about everywhere. When you drive on the road you see- It in front bob and bounce, jiggle and Jounce, shake and sway, one-step and shimmy. It is In front; it passes on each side; it Is In a long line behind and It is always in a perfect frenzy of hysterical hurry. The name of the car is the Ford, Model T.
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Mr. Harvey owns a garage and livery' stable and has given much thought to transportation troubles. In winter It is a real problem to get from place to place in northern Maine. With from three to nine feet of snow on the ground it is very difficult to travel even with horses. Mr. Harvey has been studying and experimenting for years to perfect a machine which will negotiate the drifted roads successfully. He has tried out several machines only to be obliged to discard them as useless where the snow was of great depth. To say that It Is impossible to invent a machine which will travel in the winter snows is to cast a slur on the inventive powers of Yankee brains. Whenever the need for any kind of machine has arisen someone has Invented something to answer the purpose. One should not be too skeptical about the flivver-sled.
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Mr., Harvey says there are several types of motor sled which are doing good work. Any ordinary car equipped with runners forward and with chains on the rear wheels will operate well around titles and large towns where the snow Is packed down hard hut put them out on a country road and they are helpless There Is, too. a-great trouble with the ordinary car In snow even where tt Is hard. When one-wheel slips, the power is transmitted to the slipping wheel and the longer the engine runs the more helpless the car becomes. At best the ordinary car Is a poor proposition even In an Inch or two of snow.
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Mr. Harvey makes no extravagant claims for his Invention. He says that only some form of airship can go over the snow without sinking Into it and having trouble. He Is, however, very confident that he has the best machine ever made for purposes of travel in the snow. His contention is that the machine Is workable. If the driver uses as much common-sense care in driving the car as he uses in driving a pair of horses be will have no more difficulty than he would have with the team. He makes no claim that the machine will go out across a field covered with six feet of light enow and make good time. He does claim that It will make short distances In the deep snow without difficulty. It will work in soft snow well enough to turn out for teams met on the road and will do It easier than a pair of horses.
Mr. Harvey has run the machine around town a great deal and made a trip to Crystal last week. On the Crystal Road the snow was very soft so that trotting a horse was out of the question, but the flivver-sled rolled merrily along at fifteen or eighteen miles per hour. The trip was made without mishap of any kind.
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He takes five persons up one of the steepest hills around town on high gear. The machine looks cumbersome and unwieldy, but one has but to get into it and take a ride to be convinced that it had both power and speed. It rides as comfortably as the same make of car rides in summer.
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One must not expect to travel as comfortably In winter as In summer but even If the car will make speed of only eight or ten miles per hour the greater part of the discomforts of winter travel will be eliminated. One must not expect to travel as comfortably In winter as In summer but even If the car will make speed of only eight or ten miles per hour the greater part of the discomforts of winter travel will be eliminated.
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The picture shows only the skeleton of the machine. There are several special arrangements showing but there are several others that do not show and the description of them is not given out for publication. The rear wheels are different from any others on the market. Mr. Harvey worked for a long time on a caterpillar tread but could not get anything that seemed perfectly satisfactory with that kind of a tread. The driving wheel which he is using are the regular Ford wheels with the-pneumatic tire Inflated as in summer. On each side of the rim and bolted to the are four-inch false rims carrying two inch paddles about six inches apart. The rubber tires are Inflated to the extent that their tread Is about one-half Inch below he outer edge of the paddles on the false rims. ' This gives a tread of something over a foot in width. The pneumatic tire acts as a cushion in taking up road shocks Just as in summer. Should the need arise It Is easy to let out a portion of the air in the tires so that the paddles can get in more effective work.
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The forward sled Is made with three Inch shoes with half inch keel to prevent slipping. The forward runners are brazed on specially constructed spindles which turn Inside. The runners and wheels are three- and one-Half feet spat from center to center which made It necessary to shorten the axles and allow the car to be operated on narrow country roads. The car steers easily and will follow a sled track with very little guidance.
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It is equipped with special Internal gear drive. the power, being applied at the wheels The gear Is so constructed that if a wheel starts to spin It becomes locked and can turn only when the opposite one turns. This arrangement makes the car move forward If.It is possible for the engine to start it. There Is a special arrangement on the brakes so that when the emergency break applied both brakes take effect. The danger of running away downhill is very slight.
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There are other special features in construction which Mr. Harvey claims overcome certain difficulties. Some of these will be patented before the machine la manufactured for sale. He expects to form a company and build the machines during the coming summer.
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The flivver does about everything in this country saws wood, thrashes grain, turns separators, milks cows and -does many other things. There seems to be no reason why It cannot be made to travel through the snow.
