Tom Swift series begins

The Tom Swift series is a group of juvenile adventure stories by "Victor Appleton" which featured a young inventor. Many of the inventions described were vehicles, both in a literal and literary context, to take Tom and his friends to distant lands in search of adventure.

The series began in 1910 with five volumes:

1. Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle
2. Tom Swift and His Motor Boat
3. Tom Swift and His Airship
4. Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat
5. Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout

In the first adventure Tom buys a second-hand motorcycle from his eccentric new friend, Mr. Wakefield Damon. Mr. Damon has a verbal tick of "blessing" just about every part of his anatomy or objects around him when he is excited. In some of the books Mr. Damon is said to live in Waterfield, NY, while others use Waterford, NY.

Tom improves the motorcycle slightly and has an adventure related to patent thieves who have stolen a model of one of his father's, Barton Swift's, inventions.

In Motor Boat, Tom wins a boat in an auction and has adventures on Lake Carlopa. Here, too, he does not invent the boat but simply makes a few improvements.

In the third volume, a man who was saved from a burning balloon at the end of the second book, Mr. John Sharp, revealed that he had plans to build an airship of a novel design. This used characteristics of a dirigible as well as an aeroplane. Tom and Mr. Sharp build the airship and name it the Red Cloud after the color of the aluminum gas envelope. They go on a long trip down the Atlantic coast and are pursued because the local Shopton bank has been robbed and their novel departure seems suspicious.

Although the submarine boat is called Tom's in the title, it was actually the invention of his father Barton. The boat uses a unique propulsion system with charged electrical plates.

Tom's first real invention appears in Electric Runabout. The main invention here is an alkaline-based battery-motor system with gears. He seems to build the car but it is not the primary emphasis of the story. Incidentally, 1910 is also the year when Edward Stratemeyer got his own first automobile, a 1910 Cadillac touring car, and wrote his Automobile Boys of Lakeport.