The Celebrated Challenge:
Corporate promotional materials have rarely been shy in making their claims. This pamphlet for the Challenge Wind Mill and Feed Mill Company, Batavia, Ill., is no exception.
"Having made Wind Mills a specialty for over twenty years, and having over Fifteen Thousand Mills in successful operation and constantly filling orders received from all parts of the World, it is evident that our Mill must be a first class one, or it would have gone out of existence ere this; but instead of this, our business for the past six years has increased steadily so that at present we are turning out over double the number of Mills we were six years ago."
The pamphlet excerpted here was produced in about 1890. The Challenge company was formed in 1867, and at one point produced 105 different sizes and styles of windmills.
"It's sliding head connections are so direct, and the supporters and leverage of its sails are so perfect that no other mill can be made to compete with it except by infringing these patented peculiarities."