In 1910, a boy on a motorcycle rode into American publishing and never stopped. Tom Swift, teenage inventor of Shopton, New York, built airships, submarines, electric cars, wizard cameras, and giant cannons across forty original volumes, and sold somewhere north of twenty million copies doing it.
The series was published under the house name Victor Appleton, with most volumes written by Howard Garis, one of the great workhorses of the Stratemeyer Syndicate. The formula never wavered: Tom invents something remarkable, somebody tries to steal it, and the invention itself saves the day.
What sets Tom Swift apart from every other series of its era is what it got right. These books gave American boys their first pictures of aviation, wireless communication, motion pictures, and electric transport, usually within a few years of the real thing, sometimes ahead of it. The inventor of the Taser named his device after this series: TASER stands for “Thomas A. Swift’s Electric Rifle,” volume ten. Generations of real engineers and inventors have pointed back to these books as the thing that started them building.
Why These Books Are Free
Under United States copyright law, everything published before 1931 is in the public domain. That covers the first 33 Tom Swift volumes, from Motor Cycle in 1910 through Big Dirigible in 1930, and Project Gutenberg has digitized every one of them. Most reference sites still say only 25 volumes are free. The public domain has moved on since those pages were written; one more volume’s copyright expires every January 1, and this page keeps up.
Each link below goes to Project Gutenberg, where you can read online or download free Kindle and EPUB copies.
The Series in Order (1910–1930)
- Tom Swift and His Motor Cycle (1910) — Tom buys a wrecked motorcycle from the eccentric Mr. Damon, rebuilds it, and rides into his first adventure. Start here. Read free on Project Gutenberg
- Tom Swift and His Motor Boat (1910) — A rebuilt boat and the rivals of Lake Carlopa. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Airship (1910) — The stirring cruise of the Red Cloud, seven years after Kitty Hawk. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Submarine Boat (1910) — Under the ocean for sunken treasure. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Electric Runabout (1910) — The speediest car on the road, and it’s electric. In 1910. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Wireless Message (1911) — Castaways on Earthquake Island, saved by radio. Read free
- Tom Swift Among the Diamond Makers (1911) — The secret of Phantom Mountain. Read free
- Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice (1911) — The wreck of the airship in the frozen north. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Sky Racer (1911) — The quickest flight on record, with his father’s life at stake. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle (1911) — The volume the Taser is named after, on safari in elephant land. Read free
- Tom Swift in the City of Gold (1912) — Marvelous adventures underground in Mexico. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Air Glider (1912) — To Siberia seeking a platinum treasure and a Russian exile’s lost brother. Read free
- Tom Swift in Captivity (1912) — A daring escape by airship from the land of giants. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Wizard Camera (1912) — Filming volcanoes, avalanches, and wild beasts with the first action camera. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Great Searchlight (1912) — On the border for Uncle Sam, hunting airship smugglers. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Giant Cannon (1913) — The longest shots on record, built to defend the Panama Canal. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Photo Telephone (1914) — A telephone that shows the caller’s face. He invented the video call. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Aerial Warship (1915) — The naval terror of the seas, with the Great War looming. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel (1916) — The hidden city of the Andes. Read free
- Tom Swift in the Land of Wonders (1917) — The underground search for the idol of gold. Read free
- Tom Swift and His War Tank (1918) — Doing his bit for Uncle Sam, the same year real tanks reached the front. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Air Scout (1919) — Uncle Sam’s mastery of the sky with a silent airplane motor. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Undersea Search (1920) — Treasure on the floor of the Atlantic. Read free
- Tom Swift Among the Fire Fighters (1921) — Battling flames from the air. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Electric Locomotive (1922) — Two miles a minute on the rails. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Flying Boat (1923) — The castaways of the giant iceberg. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Great Oil Gusher (1924) — The treasure of Goby Farm. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Chest of Secrets (1925) — Tracing the stolen inventions from an underground vault. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Airline Express (1926) — Ocean to ocean by daylight, decades before commercial transcontinental flight. Read free
- Tom Swift Circling the Globe (1927) — The daring cruise of the Air Monarch. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Talking Pictures (1928) — The greatest invention on record, one year after The Jazz Singer. Read free
- Tom Swift and His House on Wheels (1929) — The first motorhome, and a mountain of mystery. Read free
- Tom Swift and His Big Dirigible (1930) — Adventure by airship in the golden age of the zeppelin. The last of the free volumes, for now. Read free
Coming January 1, 2027: Volume 34, Tom Swift and His Sky Train (1931), enters the public domain. This page will be updated the week it happens.
A Curiosity: The Telescope That Escaped
One later volume is already free for a different reason. Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope (1939) sits on Project Gutenberg because its copyright was never renewed, a paperwork lapse that dropped it into the public domain decades early. It’s a later, shorter Whitman-era volume outside the original numbered run, but if you want a taste of late-period Tom Swift, it costs nothing.
Where Should a New Reader Start?
Volume one, Motor Cycle, sets up everything: Tom, his inventor father, the loyal chum Ned Newton, and Mr. Damon, who blesses his own necktie at least once per book. If your reader cares more about the machines than the setup, the fan-favorite entry points are Airship (volume 3), Electric Rifle (volume 10), and Wizard Camera (volume 14).
The same note we give for every series of this era applies: these are hundred-year-old books with hundred-year-old attitudes in places, written fast and priced at fifty cents. Preview any volume free before handing it over.
Tom Swift made a century of boys want to build things. If yours is one of them, and he wants a story written for today, The Adventures of Leo & Henry carries the same spirit forward.