Boy Builds Push-Button Farm (Jun, 1950)

Boy Builds Push-Button Farm

Around Fayette, Ala., 16-year-old Johnny Clive Williams is known as a wizard at putting electricity to work on the farm. Using such materials as old lard cans, hot plates and discarded vacuum cleaners, the youth has invented ingenious machinery for cutting corners. Johnny’s mother raises gladioli for sale to florists, so Johnny came up with an automatic machine that counts up to 30,000 bulbs a season and dusts each one with DDT. It does a 24-hour job in 3-1/2 hours. The lad, who won a Westinghouse scholarship, also built an electric chick brooder from a hot plate and scraps of metal, rewired the farmhouse, wired the barn and built in fans and lamps.