The March/April 2022 issue of Antique Power magazine is available in our gift shop and will be available in subscriber mailboxes and on newsstands soon. This issue features the Bos Brothers’ 1907 Hart-Parr Model 22-40. text by Robert Gabrick • photos by Brad Bowling

Always Ready To Go!

The Bos Brothers’ 1907 Hart-Parr Model 22-40 is ready for work at their annual open house.

“Bragging Rights” are often important. Consider the question of who developed the first successful farm tractor powered by an internal combustion engine and who became the founder of the tractor industry in one such “contest.” Let’s first set up the protagonists: Huber and Hart-Parr.

The Huber Mfg. Co. of Marion, Ohio, declared, “The development of the tractor industry from the beginning may be traced by following the successive models produced by Huber. The first Huber tractor, made in 1898, was crude in the extreme, with neither magneto, dry cells, coil, or carburetor as none of these present-day tractor accessories had been invented then. This old Huber ancestor, that ran when conditions were favorable, was, without doubt, one of the first—if not the very first—gas tractor ever sold to an American farmer. … Long before a single gasoline tractor had been built, Edward Huber saw the power farming age in his mind’s eye. … The tractor era was opened in 1898 by the announcement of ‘The Huber Gasoline Traction Engine.’”

Another traction engine innovator, the Hart-Parr Co., consistently promoted its role as “Founders of the Tractor Industry,” a claim supported by many chroniclers. Sales manager W.H. Williams coined the term “tractor” that began to appear in the company’s advertisements in 1908.

An obituary for Charles W. Hart recorded that along with Charles H. Parr, Hart co-invented the tractor, “one of the greatest modern achievements in the field of agriculture,” in The Oelwein (Iowa) Daily Register, March 18, 1937. The obituary explained that in 1891, Hart attended the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm (now Iowa State University), where he started experimenting on internal combustion engines. Starting in 1893 at the University of Wisconsin, he worked with Parr to build “successful gasoline motors,” said the obit, and the two opened a plant to manufacture engines in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1901, they established a factory in Charles City, Iowa, and in 1902, the first tractors were placed on the market. The article declared, “the Hart-Parr company pioneered the tractor industry.”

Further, an obituary for Charles Parr said he was the “co-inventor of the farm tractor with the late C.W. Hart,” in the Mason City (Iowa) Globe-Gazette on June 10, 1941.

To read more about the 1907 Hart-Parr Model 22-40 pick up a copy of the March/April 2022 issue of Antique Power magazine!

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March/April 2022 Antique Power

Always Ready To Go!

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