Only mechanical devices interested him.

He liked getting in the crops, because McCormick harvesters did most of the work; it was only the machinery of the dairy that held him enthralled.

He developed destructive tendencies as a boy; he had to take everything to pieces.

He horrified a rich playmate by resolving his new watch into its component parts--and promptly quieted him by putting it together again.
"Every clock in the house shuddered when it saw me coming," he recently said.

He constructed a small working forge in his school-yard, and built a small steam engine that could make ten miles an hour.