Frank Reade was the protagonist of a series of dime novels published primarily for boys. 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. The four Frank Reade stories concerned adventures with the character's inventions, various robot-like mechanisms powered by steam.