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THE SHIRK GASOLINE TRACTOR 1909-1911

By Donald J. Summar

607 West Lemon Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania 17603

Peter E. Shirk, proprietor of the Blue Ball Machine Works, Blue Ball, Pennsylvania, was the first successful manufacturer of gasoline-powered motor vehicles in Lancaster County. Prior to 1908 he had conceived the idea of a self-propelled farm vehicle while on weekly trips by horse and buggy to market in Reading. Shirk pitied the horses as they hauled the buggy up the steep road on Trostle's Hill, north of Bowmansville. Although the motor car was already beginning to supercede the horse as a means of over-the-road transportation, it was useless for farm work. Shirk wanted to free horses from the drudgery of farm work.

During the winter of 1908-09, Shirk designed two dissimilar vehicles and set his fourteen employees to work on them as time permitted. One vehicle, which Shirk called the &qu...

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