Read all about Alexander Walker Reid
Barrie Smith looks at the life of a farmer, entrepreneur, inventor and visionary.
Among the notable folk who lived in or near Stratford in the 1870s was Alexander Walker Reid, farmer, entrepreneur, inventor and a very public-spirited, visionary man.
He brought electric lighting to the main street, made three steam cars, then went on to develop and patent a vacuum milking machine.
At the same time he was heavily involved in many local organisations and committees.
Some five years ago, as President of Taranaki Pioneer Village, I was asked if we would be interested in Reid’s original workshop owned by now-retired plumber Wayne Lobb. After several of us inspected the building we said yes; however it was not to be.
But after seeing the original state of the building and hearing some stories about AWR I spent two days at Puki Ariki Research Centre and checking the Stratford District Council Archives.
I came away with heaps of information, saying to myself ‘This man’s life story needs to be told’.
It has now been recorded professionally on DVD and is available for viewing at Puki Ariki and Stratford Library.
Reid was born in Glasgow during 1853 and at the age of six immigrated to NZ on the ‘‘William Miles’’ with his parents, Alexander and Ellen Reid.
They arrived at Lyttleton, then made their way to Southbridge on the Canterbury Plains to take up farming. His schooling was very limited but at one stage he received some tutoring from a retired ship’s captain.
As he grew up he developed engineering skills, probably from a form of apprenticeship, and went to work for a local farm contractor named Adam Whyte, who was involved with repairing and modifying threshing machines.
It was during this period that he met Whyte’s sister, Janet, and they married during 1876.
It is not quite certain why the Reids decided to move to Taranaki some six years later, when Janet was expecting her sixth child. They went on to have a total of ten children, including twins who died as babies. As we know it was common to have large families in those earlier years.
They first moved to the Opunake area for only one year, before, in 1883, moving to a small farm on Bird Road, just south of Stratford.
At that stage most of the bush had been cut, but the land was in a very raw state, so what a daunting task was ahead of them.
It was soon after this that Reid’s enthusiasm for inventing and entrepreneurship came to the fore. In 1897 the Stratford Town Board were starting a discussion on how to light the Main Street at night: gas or electricity.
The Town Board were divided so they decided to put it to a town vote by setting up in the original Town Hall two demonstrations, gas on one side versus electricity on the other.
By that stage Reid had dabbled in the generation of power and led the charge for electric lights along with help from a Mr Porter of Cardiff.
After much demonstrating, electric power won the vote, so Reid set to developing and drawing
plans for generation, but beforehand helped arrange financial backing then formed the ‘‘Stratford Electrical Supply Company’’ during 1898.
Stratford was the third town in NZ to have electric power distributed.
They selected a section of the Patea River near Victoria Road, where there is a large S bend, and a 100 metre long tunnel was dug through.
A wooden dam was built across the river, diverting the water through to a surge chamber then into two penstocks, which turned two Turbo Alternators.
These generated single phase AC at 40 cycles, producing 2000 volts with a total capacity of 90 KW which was then transformed to 110 volts. (Today’s power is 240 V).
Power wires were erected to the Main Street, then finally Reid’s wife Janet threw the switch during a ceremony in 1900.
Reid remained company manager and director until the enterprise was sold to the Stratford Borough Council in 1916.
However all of this involvement did not stop him from thinking of what to do next.
He obviously had a strong liking for machinery and drew up plans for a steam-powered vehicle.
From 1903 to 1907 he built three of these vehicles in his Stratford Workshop, with the four HP, twocylinder kerosene-fired boilers imported from the USA.
Two of these cars were sold, with him keeping one for himself and his family with the number plate SD 1. He even took out a patent for ‘‘Means for the propulsion of a motor vehicle’’.
As we know dairying was becoming the popular land use but was handicapped by the fact that all cows were milked by hand.
As herds grew in size, Reid said to himself, ‘There has to be a better more speedy way’.
Even in my younger days I recall elderly neighbours telling me what it was like having to get up and help milk before leaving for school.
It used to take an hour to milk six to eight cows, so if your herd had grown to 60 or more it sure would have been a daunting task twice a day.
But they knew no different until Reid developed and patented one of NZ’s first vacuum milking machines, called the ‘‘AWR’’, in
1907. He also developed a rubber inflation and cup to simulate the sucking action of a calf. Most vacuum pumps were petroldriven, but I can relate to my own farm at Cardiff when I left high school in 1951.
I found in our old barn-type cowshed an AWR milking machine but it had not been used for a long time.
So my challenge was to get it going and, yes, I finally did.
Reid took his new milking machine to all the A&P shows, setting up working displays. It didn’t take long for his sales to take off, much to the delight of hundreds of local dairy farmers.
There were other makes of milking machines developed around this period but it is believed the AWR was one of the first. This was the forerunner to the huge dairy industry we have today.
As well as being a forward thinker and inventor, Reid was a fine photographer, with around
1300 of his original glass negatives now being stored at Puki Ariki thanks to a former Stratford Mayor Leo Carrington who, fortunately, saved them from the dump.
Reid also served on the first formed Stratford County Council around the turn of the century, was a member of the Ngaere Roads Board and was appointed a Justice of the Peace.
He was also instrumental in the formation of a co-operative dairy packing company and involved with the opening of the Waitara Freezing Works.
He went on to become the First Master of the Stratford Masonic Lodge, which included being a Grand Lodge Officer.
Unfortunately for Reid his wife Janet died as a victim of the influenza epidemic during 1918, leaving behind their family of six sons and two daughters, by that time all grown up.
Later Alexander remarried Ellen Anne Richmond with whom he spent the rest of his life until his death on November 21, 1938.
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