By the time Lombard was twelve he was considered the most
expert shingle-buncher in Maine. His father soon placed him in other positions
as a lumberjack, swamper, river driver and sawyer. Those experiences and his
creative genius melded and served him well.
Lombard loved to build things and even as a child he had the
remarkable ability to envision designs of machinery. As a young adult he
conjured up the idea for a regulator with which to govern the power generated
by water turbines. No one had ever heard of such a thing and did not take him seriously,
but his younger brother Samuel was a machinist and agreed to build one for him.
That invention was so successful that Lombard immediately built a bigger one
and installed it on the water wheel that powered the Bangor street railway. He
afterwards left the lumbering business to manufacture governors which he did
for six years - until he sold his company and used the capital to become a full
time inventor. Lombard was on his way to fame and fortune!
Lombard
invented several machines that improved production in the lumbering,
transportation and paper making industries: a de-barker; a pulpwood crusher; a
pine knots separator; an automatic pulpwood chop saw; a road machine; a dog
sled; a traction engine; and a tractor-truck as well as other smaller equipment.
The invention he is known best for, and the one that made him an infamous
millionaire, was the Lombard Hauler. By then he was a resident of Waterville
and in business with his brother Samuel.
Why Lombard ended up moving to Waterville is not known. He
married a Waterville girl in 1875, but they lived in Springfield for the next
twenty years. More than likely he saw potential to build and market his
inventions in the industrial towns of Waterville – Winslow. But, before they
moved he made sure his only child, Grace, received a formal education that far
exceeded his own. Following the primary grades Grace attended Lee Academy
(Normal School), and graduated from Bangor Business School. Only then did her
father move them to Waterville.
In 1895 Lombard bought land in Waterville at 225 College
Avenue, where he set up a machine shop and used his skills as a blacksmith. In
1899 he met E.J. Lawrence, a Kennebec lumberman, who thought Lombard worthy of
inventing a mechanical log hauler. Until then draft horses were utilized for
this task, and there was some limited use of logging railroads, but horses
tired and could only work for a few hours at a time; and rails also had
significant limitations. Lombard had thought about such an invention himself,
so rose to the task. He first built a wooden model of a steam powered machine.
The front was supported on a pair of sled runners; the locomotive was equipped
in back by a pair of endless tracks instead of large drive wheels. Lombard
enlisted Waterville Iron Works to build a prototype, and he applied for the
patent.
On Thanksgiving Day, 1900 the first ever continuous track
machine, that Lombard affectionately called “Mary-Ann”, was fired up for the
first time. Lawrence was impressed and
ordered three. Years later Lombard would
refer to “Mary Ann” as the granddaddy of all present day tractors. Five more of
the 19 ton machines were built and sold in the next three years. The machine
could haul sleds holding 300 tons of logs on snow iced roads. A crew of four
was needed to operate the Lombard Hauler – an engineer, a fireman, a conductor
who connected and inspected each sled, and a steersman who sat up front by the
smokestack. His job was the most dangerous because he was often blinded by
belching smoke. The Hauler hit 5mph at top speed but it had no brakes, so on a
steep downgrade, with 200-300 tons of logs in tow, it provided some frightening
rides and crashes. In spite of the risks it became a popular machine to men in
the logging trade.
In 1904 there was great excitement when Lombard held a
demonstration in Colebrook, NH. He hooked his Hauler up to a string of sleds
holding 40,000 board feet of logs. “Thousands
of people lined the road” Lombard said. “They
came from Boston and from the lumber mills and the woods.” The
demonstration so impressed one lumberman that he wrote a $5,000 check ($127,000
today) and bought the machine then and there.
A contemporary of the Stanley (Steamer) brothers, Lombard
developed a running steam-engine car in 1899 which gained attention when he
drove it about town. He aborted that project, however, to build more Lombard
Haulers - eighty-three of them by 1917. When gas engines came into vogue he
designed two six-cylinder gasoline engines. About 10 years later he introduced
a 10-ton tractor-truck powered by a diesel engine that could handle 250 tons on
icy roads. The gas and diesel versions
did not resemble the steam haulers; the fronts were more like heavy duty trucks
with front wheels instead of runners. They were used as heavy dump trucks and
to push snowplows. The back end resembled WWII half-tracks. Speaking of which,
Lombard’s track-wheeled vehicle served as a model for military tanks as well as
today’s bulldozers and snowmobiles.
The business name was changed from Lombard Traction Engine
Co. to Lombard Tractor and Truck Company in 1927. They continued to manufacture
Lombard Haulers until 1937, when the company that made Caterpillar tractors seized
the market. Lombard had retired from active participation in the company years
before to pursue full time inventing. In fact, in 1929 he applied for a patent
for a car-to-snowmobile conversion. Another forward-thinking creation!
Lombard Tractor and Truck Company in Waterville
Lombard bought land on Elm Street in 1908 and built a stately
home. The property, although converted to apartments by daughter Grace in the
1940s, is still known today as “Lombard Estates”. His secluded workshop,
located on a nearby stream, beckoned to him daily. His machine tools were
powered by a water wheel that was regulated by the very governor he had
invented years before, which he always considered his greatest invention.
Sometimes, as a reminder of his youth, he took to the woods and chopped down
some trees - always a woodsman at heart. Alvin O. Lombard died in 1937 – six
years after his wife Mary. Both are buried in Waterville’s Pine Grove Cemetery.
The Alvin Lombard house at 65 Elm St. Waterville
Some Lombard Haulers have been restored and are on display across the country including in Waterville, Patten, Leonard’s Mills and the Maine State Museum. In 1982 the Lombard Hauler was designated as a National Historic Mechanical Engineering Landmark by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Alvin O. Lombard’s legacy lives on in yet another realm. In 1960 the highest peak on the Cape Sobral Peninsula in Antarctica, was named Mount Lombard in honor of the man and his extraordinary invention.
Photos below are from an edition of Popular Science Magazine
