A.W. Gray's Horse Power Treadmill
Near Killington, Vermont
Near this Vermont site, Albert W. Gray built one of the most practical labor-saving machines of the eighteen hundreds: the horse power treadmill. Gray patented his design, and later refined it, improving a mechanism that let a walking horse drive farm equipment like threshers and churns through a gear-and-belt system, saving enormous human labor at a time when nearly every American family worked the land.
Gray didn't stop there. He is also credited with a corn sheller and a machine for making wrought iron nails. His output represents the restless Yankee tinkerer tradition, the same impulse that made Vermont and upstate New York hotbeds of small-scale industrial invention throughout the mid-eighteen hundreds.
