Catalogue of Gray's Horse Power Machines for Grain Threshing and Wood Sawing, 1898

As farmers mechanized barn and farmyard work in the nineteenth century, they began to use stationary power sources. These included devices such as treadmills that converted the movement of animals to drive a variety of agricultural machines. Enterprising manufacturers, like Vermont-based A.W. Gray's Sons, specialized in producing and selling these devices and the machines they were designed to power.