WHY HAVE AN ENGINE?

By Staff
Published on May 1, 1981
article image
Mr. Joseph Chesak of Medaryville, Indiana and his 1 HP Fairbanks Morse, type Z engine, now owned by Don Hitzeman.

Westville, Indiana

Things were tough for a farmer in the early 1940s, especially if
your farm was way out where there were no electric power lines. All
the work was done with horses and by hand. There were a lot of
great items around to make the work easier, but they were, after
all, new fangled and maybe not worth anything. You may have gotten
a tractor; however, the only advantage was that it didn’t need
to be fed twice a day. But the horses were kept if for no other
reason but to pull the tractor to start it when your arm got
tired!

Now with all these problems, why should a guy go out and spend
hard-earned cash on any other ‘labor-saving device?’ What
would make you part with the ‘green’ to make things easier?
After all, you are about 30 years old and have the problems and
procedures down by now. Well, there are a lot of things going on in
the world and you really want to know about it. Why, there is a
newspaper for that and it does a real good job, but you need to go
five or ten miles to town to get it. Then you sit by an oil lamp to
read it and fall asleep because of all the hard work that was done
that day.

Well, radio was the thing and the ‘in group’ had one.
Everyone that wanted the latest news from the war front had a
radio. There was one big problem; a radio needs electric power from
a battery. It didn’t take long to find out you were back to the
trips into town, but this time to get a battery charged. You know
when it really needed to be charged? Right in the middle of an
important broadcast.

That’s the reason Mr. Joseph Chesak bought a Fairbanks-Morse
type Z engine. The first thing this engine did was to be belted to
a generator from a Ford car so the radio battery could be kept
charged. It didn’t take long for the engine to be used for
other chores around the farm, like pumping water for livestock. He
used it to pump water from several basements after a real downpour.
Then one day Mrs. Chesak saw the real value in this thing and it
got hooked up to a washing machine. So, as it turns out, this
little 1? HP engine revolutionized the farm. This particular engine
was used productively until the mid-1950s when it was set aside for
more efficient equipment.

I bought it from Mr. Chesak in September 1979 and started
restoring it. It’s main function now is to help demonstrate how
our mechanized world developed in the early days of power
equipment. It will be an educational tool to provide first-hand
information on our heritage to the future generations.

Online Store Logo
Need Help? Call 1-866-624-9388