When Professor Edward Sanders Richardson arrived at LSU in July 1911 to take over as the director of the Agricultural Extension Department, the first Boys Corn Clubs — forerunners of 4-H clubs — were in their second year of existence with members in 46 parishes, information was provided to rural homes via the Farmer’s Literary Circular and University Press News, and the Agricultural Extension Department offered speakers to groups across the state. Extension information was provided either in person or in print. In short, access to information was limited.

In the history of Louisiana cooperative extension, early leaders understood that information access was limited, and several major efforts were made to make access to life-changing information more easily available. One effort was the first Agricultural Demonstration Train that traveled over 1,000 miles of Louisiana railroad lines and made 42 stops with over 54,000 people seeing the livestock and agriculture exhibits furnished by the staffs of the early experiment stations. Lectures and demonstrations were made by members of the Agricultural College and experiment stations and members of the Extension Department. The second expanded Agricultural Demonstration Train left the station in 1911 and spent three months crossing the length and breadth of the state. But information access was still limited to the communities with access to the railroads.

Professor Richardson described to a New Orleans Times-Picayune reporter in 1949 how he began to think about another radical technological innovation, the motion picture: “You know, one day I got a whiff of roasting coffee. It made a vivid impression on my brain. A taste of dewberry pie did the same thing. Here taste and smell were most convincing, two senses we were not using at all in the field of education. And the picture-show people had thrown into our very laps an instrument that might open new ways into the minds of young people — but we were not using it.”

In 1913 and 1914, Richardson and Jasper Ewing, a commercial photographer, produced three motion pictures, “For the Land’s Sake,” which demonstrated winter cover crops and cotton cultivation; “The Cows are Coming,” a film about dairy production; and “Old Man River,” which showed reclamation efforts following the 1912 floods, according to research by Richard Frye, who wrote a doctoral dissertation on Richardson in the 1960s. Historical records reveal that these three films were the first educational films produced in Louisiana and are likely the first in the nation. Still, information access was limited. In 1914 electrification of rural areas was years away, and film projectors needed electricity.

Not letting something as simple as rural electrification stand in his way, Richardson attacked the problem like any extension agent does today. He figured out a way to get the administration to give him money and bought equipment. Richardson met with the infamously budget conscious president of LSU, Colonel Thomas D. Boyd, and convinced him to fund the equipment purchases that lead to a radical technological innovation.

Richardson purchased an Overland Automobile Company touring car; a dynamo, or small generator; belts and pulleys; switch panels and cables; and a screen and a portable projector. Richardson, with the help of W.H. Balis from the Agriculture Extension Department and Logan Moore, a senior from the LSU electrical college, connected the pulleys and belts to the drive shaft of the Overland car and the dynamo. The electricity generated was then routed through the switch panel and cabling to the portable projector. After proof-of-concept testing, the unnamed project moved into action. On the night of Nov. 20, 1914, the trio took a road trip to Zachary, Louisiana, and for the first time an “educational moving picture show” was shown without regard as to where in the state the audience was assembled.

A few years later the Overland Car was replaced by a truck that carried the projector, dynamo, switch panels and cabling, but there were additions to the truck, and electrical cooking plates and electric ovens were added. So, not only could movies be shown, but the upgraded truck offered the ability to provide cooking demonstrations. It was the birth of the “Many-Machine.” The truck could do many things, including getting stuck many times while traveling the poor roads of rural Louisiana.

Bruce W. Garner is an agriculture and natural resources extension agent in West Carroll and Morehouse parishes.

This article appears in the summer 2023 edition of Louisiana Agriculture magazine.

E.S. Richardson. AgCenter file photo

“The University is heartily in accord with the great forward movement. It believes that education neither begins nor ends with a four-year college course but is coincident with life itself. It believes that every boy and girl, man, and woman, in the state is entitled to at least some of the benefits and privileges that the university has to give.”

— Edward Sanders Richardson,

1912 Report to State Superintendent of Education

The second automobile used to spread educational films across Louisiana was a Ford Model T truck nicknamed "the Many-Machine." Illustration created from historical photos by Ana Iverson