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RonMC
02-06-2000 15:38:29
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Re: Holt Manufacturing in reply to Lee Bradley, 02-04-2000 10:48:12
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Hi - I have some on Holt and Best - this under Charles Henry Holt - born in Loudon,New Hampshire, went to school in Boston, studied accounting, left in 1865 for S.F., teacher and book-keeper. His family was in the timber business in Concord, N.H., specializing in hardwoods for wagon wheels. Charles established himself as C.H.Holt & Co, buying timber from his father and selling it to Calif wagon and boat builders. One of his brothers, Frank, moved to Calif, and established a wagon wheel mfg. business. They found the wood from the east didn't work out in the Calif. climate, and moved to Stockton and formed the Stockton Wheel Co. After around 60 yrs. of successful manufacture of wheels, steam engines and some of the first viable crawlers, the Holt and Best companies merged to form the Caterpillar Tractor Co. in 1925". This under crawlers. - Benjamin Holt was a pioneer of crawler technology (a son I assume), and he tested his first converted steam tractor in Stockton in Nov. 1904. Holt gas-powered crawlers worked on the L.A. aqueduct project in 1908. Holt viewed this as something of a development exercise and learned a lot from it, because heat and dust took theit toll on the machines. Downtime was considerable". That's about it in that source, my fingers hurt. I have a scanned schematic of a Holt crawler with a part list, can e-mail it to anyone interested - it's from a 1918 book called " the Modern Gas Tractor, it's const., op., and repair". E-mail me direct if you'd like a copy. It's in 2 parts - scanner isn't big enough, but can be put together.
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