Caterpillar Ten Photo Archive
Caterpillar Ten Photo Archive
ITEM E209
Including 7C Fifteen and High Fifteen
By Bob LaVoie
The Caterpillar Ten is the smallest of the Caterpillar line and probably the MOST POPULAR among collectors and restorers today. These 4,500-pound tractors were born and raised in the years of research and development. All of these little tractors were affected by the classifications of the testing procedures as well as marketing strategy.
These are the tractors that were sold through the often-debated color change of 1931. Now they can all be found here in one photographic collection. Finally, the opportunity for side-by-side comparisons of these highly sought after tractors is possible.
Softbound, 128 pages, 119 photos, 10.25'' x 8.5''
Imagine a book devoted to Caterpillar tractors and featuring a photograph of “Fan Dancer Sally Rand’s mother, Mrs. Ernest Kisling” inspecting her 7C Fifteen orchard model. Sally, most famous for her risqué “bubble dance” that she often performed unclothed, gave the tractor as a Christmas gift in 1932 for her mother’s “tree grove.” Caterpillar got actor Clark Gable to pose driving a 7C Fifteen. While the exception, these images add a light touch to the history of Caterpillar tractors. Overall, Bob LaVoie has mined Caterpillar’s Corporate Archives for an all-encompassing 119 photo review of the small 4,500-pound Model Ten introduced in 1928, discontinued in 1932, and replaced by the 7C Fifteen and “High Fifteen,” featuring a 24-inch clearance. The tractors are shown in a wide range of work settings, including plowing snow, pulling a hay baler, cultivating a variety of crops, skidding logs, grading roadways, plowing, and disking fields, and mowing. Numerous photos feature posed “portraits” of the various versions. Acknowledging the power of the visual image, this book, as with other early Iconografix publications, provides very limited photo captions. The publisher noted the photographs are “accompanied by the captions made available by the archive.”
Book Review by Robert Gabrick
