[1][2] The first novel, Frank Reade and His Steam Man of the Plains, an imitation of Edward Ellis's The Steam Man of the Prairies (1868), was written by Harry Enton and serialized in the Frank Tousey juvenile magazine Boys of New York, February 28 through April 24, 1876.
[3] The four Frank Reade stories concerned adventures with the character's inventions, various robot-like mechanisms powered by steam.
They were first serialized in Boys of New York, then the individual novels were collected in the Franke Reade Library series that followed.
His inventions included airships of the dirigible-balloon and helicopter type,[4] submersibles, steam-driven and electrical land vehicles, and steam- and electric-powered robots.
The Frank Reade stories are perhaps the best known of the many boys' invention fiction series published in America during the later 19th century.