Dear Anna Mae:
I am coming to you and your readers for some help.
Recently, while in England our company representative for the
European area handed me a tracing (pencil rubbing) of a nameplate
from an early one cylinder gas engine, and asked if I would try to
locate a little more information concerning it – such as, back
ground and history of the company that made the engine and anything
in the way of operator’s manual or parts list. This gentleman
and his brother had picked up the engine at a sale and were going
to restore it to operating condition, and felt that any information
that could be located here in the United States might be helpful to
them.
The pencil rubbing, (illegible for printing purpose) does not
tell us much more than the name of the engine (‘The Hired
Man’ manufactured by ‘Associated Mfgrs. Co., Waterloo,
Iowa’). On one side of the picture of ‘The Hired Man’
is the following ‘Everything the Farmer Needs at Less Than
Catalog House Prices’ -on the other side of the picture, the
words seem to be ‘Any You Can Buy From Your Dealer . . .’
(we cannot read the complete wording in this case).
If you can ask your readers for information about the ‘Hired
Man’ as manufactured by the Associated Mgfrs. Co., of Waterloo,
Iowa, and ask them to send any information to my attention – Leslie
B. Schramm, C/O SCHRAMM, INC., 800 E. Virginia Avenue, West
Chester, PA 19380 – I would appreciate it very much.
Entirely separate from this in formation – I enclose a
photograph of the first portable compressor we built in 1908. You
will notice it is built from a one cylinder gas engine as
manufactured by Domestic Engine & Pump Company, and, if you
look closely, you will notice the compressor half also was built
from the same engine with only the cylinder head converted.
As we are coming into our 75th year in 1975, we have had
occasion to rebuild this No. 1 Compressor, which we traded in 23
years after we sold it in 1908 (at the time we traded in the
compressor, of course, the trade-in allowance was much greater than
the original selling price). The unit is now in operating condition
once again, as well as a 1919 compressor which is also built from a
horizontal two cylinder engine where once of the engine cylinders
has been converted to a compressor cylinder (I enclose photo of
this also).
From time to time we receive requests for information about some
of our old compressors, particularly those of the vintage 1908 to
1925, and while doing a little research work for someone who had
recently purchased one of them, I found that the decalcomania which
had been applied to our No. 1 compressor many years ago when it
came back into our possession was not the proper decal (it showed
pictures of later compressors, and was at least 25 years newer than
the vintage of the compressor itself). We therefore took photos of
some of our old machines and blew up the name decals, cleaned it up
and strengthened the enlargement, then made a new set of decals
from this. These are currently available to people who have our old
compressors, and if among your readers someone is looking for a
Schramm decal to apply to their old compressor they should write to
me and I will be glad to supply the decal.
