WHEEL FOR ROAD-ENGINES by RESCUE B. PAGE
Patent number: 442780
Filing date: May 29, 1890
Issue date: Dec 16, 1890
See full patent here.
Fresno Morning Republican 18 Oct 1889 p3
R. B. Page's Legs
They Will Carry the Heaviest Load With Ease
STEAM WILL URGE THEM ON
A Fresno Man's Invention of a Remarkable Wagon That Walks Instead of Rolling.
R. B. Page is working upon an invention that if successful will go far towards dispensing with horses and other draft animals on steep mountain roads and on sandy plains.
It may be called a walking machine. It is operated by a steam engine, and is practically a wagon without wheels. It has four legs and four feet, all of iron, and in walking and hauling its load it places its toes first upon the ground then upon its heels. These four legs work upon a pivot, and this pivot is always the same distance from the ground like the hub of a wheel. It resembles a four-spoked wheel without a rim, but its inventor claims for it that it can do work that a wheel could not.
Fresno Morning Republican 27 Jan 1891 p3
A SUCCESSFUL TEST.
THE PAGE TRACTION ENGINE PROVES A CAPABLE MACHINE.
A Veritable Steam Walker Makes its Way Over Soft Ground and Solves the Traction Problem.
The new traction engine supplied with the wheel patented by R. B. Page of this city has been in successful operation in soft sandy soil near the eastern extremity of N street. It was pulling three gang plows of five and four plows each, and taking in over ten feet of ground as it went. The three plows together were supposed to be sufficient for twenty-six horses, but the fourteen horse power engine seemed to do the work easily.
The plows were not arranged well and there was no facility for fastening them as they should be, in fact, the experiment was made only for the purpose of testing the patent wheels. These wheels are unlike anything of the kind ever before shown and consist of a sort of combination hub, provided with a series of ears arranged in four pairs, each pair is connected with shoe which forms the outer surface of the wheel. A rod or bar of iron connects one end of the shoe with one of the pair of ears, and a second bar connects the other end of the shoe with the other ear of the pair. These rods extend over the shoe in opposite directions.
The shoes are about four and a half feet long, and from twelve to twenty inches in width. Each of the bars connecting the shoes to the hub are pivotaly arranged at each end, and when the shoe drops upon the ground it remains stationary while the movement is continued on the pivoted bearings of the bars until the time comes for the shoe to lift. Each shoe hits the other as it drops, and more than one whole shoe is on the ground all of the time. A series of springs prevent the shoe from falling too far or lifting too late.
The advantages claimed for the wheel are that with so much surface on the ground, between four and a half and five square feet, the engine will not sink into the soft ground, and cannot possibly slip.
In its trial trip around and over the soft ground on last Friday and Saturday the engine and the wheels proved itself to be all that he claimed for it, and it walked over plowed land, muddy land, soft land and land strewn with bricks and railroad ties as easily as the other kind of wheel would move over a hard road. The patentee, R. B. Page, and his partner, G. P. Gunter, feel that the wheel is a success, and solves the problem of traction engine work in soft ground. Another exhibition will be given at the same place tomorrow afternoon.
See other Walking Wheels at the bottom of the Walking Machines page.