A hunchbacked boy of fifteen builds a man of iron that walks, driven by a steam boiler in its chest, and hitches it to a wagon for the prairies. Ellis was an Ohio-born schoolteacher who sold his first dime novel at twenty and never stopped, writing hundreds under a dozen names; this 1868 story is usually counted the first science-fiction dime novel, and every robot since is downstream of it. Fifty-nine plates spanning 1790 to 1916 bring the prairie world to life, with frontier scenes by George Catlin and luminous marine and river views by Fitz Henry Lane.