Snowday!

Apropos to the massive amounts of snowfall over the weekend along the East Coast, we bring you a few links today. First, to the circa 1926 photo of a Model T snowmobile above, which TA spotted among the National Postal Museum’s collection on Flickr.

An unidentified rural letter carrier poses next to a Model-T Ford vehicle with a snowmobile attachment. The vehicle is fitted with a kit advertised as the “Mailman’s Special” from the manufacturer, Farm Specialty Manufacturing Company of New Holstein, Wisconsin. It included skis that replaced the front tires and caterpillar treads that wrapped around the back tires. Rural carriers are responsible for providing their own transportation. At a time when automobiles were not yet equal to the demands of icy or snowy roads, the skis and tread kit saved carriers the expense of purchasing and maintaining a horse and sled for winter deliveries.

Next, we’ve all by now seen the following video of the Armstead Snow Motors concept snow vehicle, circa 1924:

But reader David Caldwell went one step further and sniffed out U.S. Patent 1,431,440, given to Frederick R. Burch of Seattle in 1922. Burch apparently assigned his patent to Armstead and had taken out an earlier patent in 1917 (1,228,093) along the same lines. He also in 1906 (and then based in Minneapolis) told the New York Times he planned on making a trip to the North Pole (NYTimes article) with his brother “in an ice automobile of their own invention.” The description of said automobile is sparse, but it doesn’t sound much like the Armstead Snow Motor.