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Chapter 1

Start of the Power Farming Revolution

Tractor power has revolutionized farming methods. When the first tractors trundled off on threshing tours in the American Midwest in the early 1890s, however, they were crude and unreliable. There was little evidence they would ever offer serious competition to the steam engine. Steam reigned supreme for another 20 years or so before tractors took the lead in the power farming revolution.

Like most tractors, Twin City machines, built by the Minneapolis Steel and Machinery Co., had become lighter and more versatile machines by the 1920s. The 1926 Twin City 21-32 tractor in the photograph was a four-cylinder model producing almost 36 HP.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, it was the steam engine that provided farmers with their first alternative to muscle power for jobs ranging from plowing to threshing. Until then, muscle power was provided by people who worked on the land and by large numbers of draft animals, including horses, oxen, mules and, occasionally, donkeys. For centuries, animals were used to pull the heavy loads, to plow and cultivate the soil, to power machines that threshed the grain and prepared feed for livestock and, in some cases, to give their owners a ride to and from the fields each day.

For the working animals, it was a life of toil, and some were literally worked to death. No doubt there were those that were well cared for and treated with at least a degree of sensitivity, but at a time when so many people experienced brutality in their own lives, there was probably little compassion to spare for the animals with which they worked. As for the humans, although animals provided most of the power needed to grow and harvest crops in areas such as Europe and North America, there was still a huge demand worldwide for manpower in agriculture. Millions of people spent their working lives on farms doing jobs that were often strenuous and repetitive, and sometimes dangerous as well.

This was the way farming was organized for thousands of years. Viewed from the perspective of highly mechanized agriculture in the twenty-first century, it may have a rustic charm, but it was also an extremely inefficient way to produce food. The large numbers of working animals consumed significant quantities of the food they helped to grow, and the productivity per farm worker was so low that just a few centuries ago well over 50 percent of the working population had to be employed on the land to provide enough food to meet the needs of a country such as Britain or France.

Steam engines, together with many millions of hard-working horses, oxen and mules, provided most of the farming industry’s power needs before the development of the tractor. This more efficient power source helped to produce food more abundantly and more cheaply than ever before.

On British farms, the daily work rate for a skilled plowman and two or three horses was an acre (0.4 hectares) per day in medium to heavy soils, increasing to 1.5 acres (0.6 hectares) daily on light, easily worked land. The average horsepower of new tractors sold in Britain during the early 2000s was almost 120 HP, and a plowman with this size of tractor would expect to plow 2 to 3 acres (0.8 to 1.2 hectares) per hour.

Thanks to the development of the steam engine and the tractor, few people in the developed world experience the stresses and strains of farming solely with muscle power. It remains, however, the daily reality for millions of people in developing countries where food production is still limited to the pace of a team of oxen or the physical strength of a farmer and his family.

Power farming, based first on the steam engine and then on the tractor, has achieved a massive increase in farming efficiency and productivity. With mechanized agriculture, just 2 or 3 percent of the working population produce enough to feed the other 97 percent or so, with draft animals making occasional nostalgic appearances at old-time farming events and traditional plowing matches.

J. I. Case Threshing Machine, Co. was one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of agricultural steam engines in the early 1900s. By 1924, the company had become one of the few traditional steam engine manufacturers to make the switch to tractor production.

The Start of the Revolution

Britain had already established a clear lead in the use of steam power in factories and in the mining industry, and the first farms to use steam power were also British. The power farming revolution started in a modest way in 1798, when John Wilkinson, a wealthy businessman, installed a stationary engine on his farm near Wrexham in north Wales. This is the first recorded example of steam power being used on a farm, and Wilkinson used it to power a threshing machine, probably replacing one or two horses that would previously have been used for the same job.

Steam engines were inefficient and extremely expensive in the late eighteenth century, and it is unlikely that Wilkinson would have expected to cover the cost of the engine through just a few weeks of threshing work each year. He did, however, have close business links with one of the leading steam engine manufacturers; using a steam engine on his own farm may have been an attempt to encourage other landowners to follow his example and invest in steam.

The next reference to a steam engine on a farm comes from Scotland in the following year when “a respectable farmer” in East Lothian was using a stationary engine for threshing. In this case, the farm was close to a coal mine, from which the farmer was able to collect his fuel from the pit-head at a reduced price. There are more reports of engine installations on farms in Britain during the next 40 years, but the numbers were small and the majority of farmers remained unconvinced of their usefulness. In some parts of the United States, farmers were apparently more willing to switch to steam power. A survey of agricultural steam engines in 1838 showed Pennsylvania and Louisiana leading the trend with steam power, with 274 engines already installed on Louisiana farms and estates, where they powered cane-crushing equipment for sugar production. Some of the engines were imported from Britain, but American manufacturers were expanding rapidly and would soon dominate the US domestic market.

In his book Early Stationary Steam Engines in America, Carroll W. Pursell quotes negotiations in 1812 between a Louisiana sugar estate owner and Benjamin Latrobe, one of the first of the American steam engine manufacturers. The engine was needed to power a sugar mill, and the price Latrobe quoted for an engine with a 30 cm (12 in) diameter cylinder was $2500. This figure would leave Latrobe with no profit at all, he claimed, but it would cover some of his overheads, and it might lead to further orders on which he could make a profit, which suggests that Mr. Latrobe was a persuasive salesman. Most of the steam engines installed on Louisiana farms replaced the animal power previously used for the crushers, and Pursell quotes another survey in 1840, when there were an estimated 400 steam-powered mills in the state, leaving 354 powered by animals.

From Stationary to Portable

In spite of the limited acceptance of stationary steam power on British farms and more impressive statistics from the sugar estates of Louisiana, the commercial impact of the agricultural steam engine was still minuscule even by the late 1830s. This was 40 years after John Wilkinson first showed how steam power could be used for threshing. Nevertheless, the technical breakthrough that made steam power available on many thousands of farms was on its way.

The breakthrough came when a steam engine was mounted on a chassis and four wheels so that horses could tow it from farm to farm. This was the portable engine, and it took a surprisingly long time for such a logical idea to be developed. The portable engine made a significant difference to the economics of using steam power for farm work, as it could be operated by contractors, meaning that groups of farmers in the same area could share the cost and use of an engine.

Several British companies were developing portable engines at about the same time, but credit for being the first to demonstrate the idea usually goes to J. R. & A. Ransome of Ipswich, now a subsidiary of the Textron company and known as Ransomes. It took a portable engine weighing 1.75 tonnes (1.72 tons) to the 1841 Royal Show, where it was used in a threshing demonstration and described as the “great novelty” of the show. The Ransomes portable was said to produce as much power as five horses. A special design feature was a pipe taking the waste steam into the chimney, where it mingled with the smoke from the fire to extinguish sparks that might be released to cause a fire in the heaps of threshed straw.

Most of the steam engines used on farms were portables, used mainly for stationary work, such as threshing, and were pulled from farm to farm by teams of horses. This picture clearly shows the metal seat for the driver and the wooden pole where the horses were hitched.

In the following year, Ransome followed its success with the portable by building the world’s first self-propelled agricultural steam engine, which it took to the 1842 Royal Show. The self-propelled engine, the immediate ancestor of the steam traction engine, made a slow commercial start, but the portable was an immediate success. By 1851, just 10 years after the first demonstration, the number of manufacturers of portable engines in Britain had reached at least a dozen and there were an estimated 8000 portables on UK farms.

Portable engines were also attracting interest in the United States, where the potential market for agricultural steam power was much bigger than in Britain. It is likely that some engines were built on a one-off basis before commercial production started, but the surviving records suggest that at least two manufacturers were offering portable engines for sale by 1849. Charles Hoad and Gilbert Bradford of Watertown, New York, were awarded a medal when one of their engines was shown at the 1851 New York Fair. A.L. Archambault’s “farm engine” was built in Philadelphia and was offered in three sizes with power outputs ranging up to 30 HP, according to some reports.

A Growing Manufacturing Base

More US and Canadian manufacturers flooded into the market from the 1850s onwards, building both portable and traction engines. The first J.I. Case engine was built in 1869, when the demand for steam power was beginning to expand rapidly, and Case became the United States’ largest manufacturer of portable and traction engines and also the biggest worldwide. The table on page 8 shows how Case production figures reflect trends in the market, including the rapid collapse in sales when tractor power took over. Case built its last steam engine in 1924, when the production total had reached more than 36,000 engines in 55 years.

The first Case tractor was an experimental model built in 1892. Based on the chassis and wheels of a Case traction engine, its power unit was a twin-cylinder gasoline engine. Reliability problems persuaded Case to abandon the tractor experiments and concentrate on its steam engines.

As well as increasing production, the steam engine manufacturers were also making design improvements to boost performance and efficiency, and an indication of the progress in efficiency is available in the results of trials carried out annually by the Royal Agricultural Society of England (RASE). The trials measured fuel efficiency or the weight of coal used per horsepower-hour of power output, which means the fuel burnt to produce one horsepower for a period of one hour. They were organized with great care in order to ensure the results were as accurate as possible and to allow results for different years to be compared. The fuel for the engines was supplied from the same coal mine each year, and an analysis of the coal was published to make the results as useful as possible.

The results for the winning portables in six years of trials between 1849 and 1855 are shown in the table below, which was originally published in The Engineer in 1856.

A Farming Solution?

By the 1850s, steam power on farms was still restricted to stationary work, including threshing and driving machines for crushing or milling grain for feeding livestock. This was the same type of work that steam engines had first handled 50 years previously. Steam was already providing power for manufacturing industries and for mining, and steam-powered railways and ships were revolutionizing transport; however, agriculture—the biggest industry of them all—still relied on horses and oxen for many important jobs, including plowing, cultivating and harvesting.

It was a challenge that attracted both engineers and farmers, who invested large amounts of time and money seeking ways to make steam power available for field work. Most of the development work was in the 1850s, and many of the experiments in the United States, Britain and France produced expensive failures. The breakthrough came when John Fowler and others in Britain developed the cable plowing system, using a steam-powered windlass to pull a plow attached to a cable back and forth across a field. Cable plowing was popular in Europe, but failed to attract interest in the United States and Canada, where soil conditions in some areas allowed steam engines to plow by direct traction with the plow hitched to the rear of a traction engine. As the end of the nineteenth century approached, the future of the big companies specializing in agricultural steam engine production must have looked secure, and it is unlikely that the arrival of the first tractors would have caused much anxiety.

Cable plowing and cultivating were developed to overcome soil compaction and other problems caused by heavy traction engines. Two cable plowing engines with a winding drum were parked at opposite sides of a field, and an attached plow or cultivator pulled back and forth between them.

Evolution of the Tractor

While it was in Britain that the first steam engines were developed, the evolution of the tractor began in the United States and later spread to Europe. Credit for building the first tractor is usually given to John Charter of the Charter Gasoline Engine Co. based at Sterling, Illinois. In 1889, Charter mounted a big, single-cylinder gasoline engine made by his company on the wheels of a Rumely traction engine.

The tractor was taken to farms near Madison, South Dakota, where it was used to drive a pulley belt powering a threshing machine. The performance of the tractor must have been satisfactory because Charter’s company received orders to supply a further five or six tractors to farmers or contractors in the same area.

Competition for the Charter arrived in 1892 when at least three more experimental or pre-production tractors came onto the scene, all designed for threshing work and all built on the running gear of steam traction engines, with a slow-revving gasoline engine to provide the power. Traction engine wheels and drive gears provided a readily available base for the engine, and it was a logical starting point for the early tractor pioneers.

One of the 1892 arrivals was the Capital tractor made by the Dissinger brothers from Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. They used an engine built under licence from the Otto company in Germany to power their tractor, which was designed for threshing. Little more was heard of the brothers’ first tractor venture, but the Dissinger family returned to the tractor market a few years later with a new Capital tractor which proved popular in the early 1900s. A more significant name in the list of tractor pioneers in 1892 was the J.I. Case Threshing Machine Co. It mounted a twin-cylinder, four-stroke Patterson gasoline engine with 20 HP rated output on a set of traction engine wheels and axles—made presumably by Case—and this was used as a test vehicle.

A New Commitment

The fact that the leading agricultural steam engine company took an interest at such an early stage in a potentially competing power source shows impressive foresight, and the fact that it also quickly abandoned the project was almost certainly the correct commercial decision. In the 1890s, steam engines were already benefiting from well over a century of technical and commercial development, and they had established a reputation for reliability and a reasonable level of efficiency. Gasoline engines were still at a very early stage of development and were far from reliable, with primitive fuel and ignition systems that were notoriously temperamental. The Case engineers soon discovered that the gasoline engine on their tractor lacked the reliability of their steam engines, and it was this that brought the tractor development program to an abrupt end.

Case showed equally good judgement when it decided to start a new development program for tractors almost 20 years later. By about 1910, when its new tractor project began, production of Case traction and portable engines had reached record levels; however, the company decided this was the right time to move into the tractor market and, as usual, its timing was perfect. While many rival steam engine manufacturers simply continued building traditional engines for what soon became a shrinking market, Case was ready to move into the tractor market just in time to catch the massive sales boom encouraged by the 1914–18 war. It was also able to take advantage of almost 20 years of technical improvements in gasoline engine design and subsequently build tractors that were much more reliable than anything it could have offered in 1892.

Froelich Enters the Fray

The third member of the group of tractor pioneers in 1892 was John Froelich, who lived in Froelich, Iowa, a small town named after his parents. At an early stage in his career, Froelich was running a steam-powered grain elevator plus a feed mill, but he also built up a business as a contractor, operating his own well-drilling equipment and also working with a threshing crew on farms in the Dakotas. In 1890, he bought a gasoline engine from the Charter Gasoline Engine Co. It produced 4.5 HP rated output and had one horizontal cylinder.

Froelich bought the engine to power the drill he used for his well-boring business, and it may have encouraged his idea to use a similar engine in a tractor. It is also possible that he may have heard about the Charter tractors when he was working on farms in the Dakotas. He decided to build his own tractor, and the power unit he chose was a single-cylinder Van Duzen gasoline engine made in Cincinnati, Ohio. While most of the early gasoline engines at that time had a horizontal cylinder, the Van Duzen engine was a vertical design.

The cylinder of the Van Duzen engine was massive, with the 356 mm (14 in) bore and stroke providing 35.3 liters (2155 cu. in) capacity and producing a decidedly modest 16 HP output. The biggest engine currently available in a John Deere tractor is a six-cylinder diesel with a turbocharger and intercooler, delivering well over 400 HP from 14 liters (854 cu. in).

This is a replica of the tractor built by John Froelich in 1892. It was based on surviving photographs and engineering drawings of the original and was built to feature in a John Deere historical film. Most details are reasonably accurate, but it has a much later John Deere twin-cylinder power unit.

Froelich and William Mann, one of his employees, made a wooden chassis to carry the engine, and this was mounted on traction engine running gear. Drive shafts, gear wheels and other components were bought from the Robinson steam engine company in Richmond, Indiana. The tractor was completed in 1892 and, after a number of modifications and adjustments, worked successfully.

John Froelich designed his tractor with the engine in the middle and a platform at the front for the driver. This gave an almost unobstructed forward view, which was a big improvement on the usual steam traction engine layout with the driver at the rear. The operator had to stand while driving the tractor, partly because the steering wheel could be operated only from a standing position and partly because no seat was provided. The only concession to driver comfort was a wooden container below the steering wheel to hold a large can of drinking water.

The main fuel tank was at the rear of the driver’s platform, and there was a lever-operated pump to transfer gasoline from the main tank to a small cylindrical tank high above the engine. The engine was not equipped with a fuel pump, and fuel was supplied by gravity feed from the overhead tank. The transmission was a gear drive from the engine to a large-diameter ring gear on each of the rear wheels. All the gear wheels were completely exposed to dirt and dust, but on the later production version most of the transmission was enclosed.

The Waterloo Boy tractors were not alone in retaining a steel-frame structure well into the 1920s. The Huber Manufacturing Co. in Marion, Ohio, started building its Light Four tractor in 1917. The Light Four proved popular with customers and was still available in 1928.

A New Tractor Company is Born

Froelich bought a new Case threshing machine and took it and the tractor to South Dakota. The records he kept of this threshing tour show the equipment was working for 52.5 days, and during that time it threshed 62,000 bushels of wheat and other small grains. No major breakdowns were reported, and, after Froelich returned from Dakota in November, enthusiastic reports of the tractor’s performance attracted the interest of a group of businessmen in Waterloo, Iowa. Froelich was invited to a meeting where it was agreed to form a new company in Waterloo to build tractors based on his design.

The company was established in January 1993 and was called the Waterloo Gasoline Traction Engine Company. It was based in Waterloo, with Froelich as the president, and, rather unusually, the Van Duzen engine from his first tractor was removed and used to power the new factory. Four new tractors were built, all based on his original design, but with a number of improvements, including steel instead of wood for the main frame.

Two of the Waterloo tractors were sold, but both were returned by their new owners because of mechanical problems. This was a serious setback for the company, and it decided to concentrate on making stationary engines instead of tractors. The engines, designed initially by Froelich, were a success; in 1895, the company name was changed to the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co., omitting the word “Traction”. At about the same time, Froelich left the company to begin a new career elsewhere.

This was not an auspicious start; however, in spite of the setbacks and John Froelich’s departure from the company, his first tractor was a highly significant development. It was probably the first tractor to be equipped with reverse as well as forward gears, and this must have been a big advantage when positioning the tractor correctly to power the belt drive to a thresher.

Another reason why John Froelich’s tractor is so important is that it was the original forerunner of the modern John Deere tractor range. Waterloo expanded to become one of the leading stationary engine manufacturers, but they later returned to tractor production with the Waterloo Boy range, available in various versions from 1912. When Deere and Co. decided to buy its way into the tractor market in 1918, the manufacturer it chose to take over at a cost of £2,350,000 ($3,760,000) was the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Co.

Waterloo boy

A sales leaflet for the Waterloo company’s new tractors made it clear they were competing for sales against “the old-fashioned, cumbersome and complicated steam traction engine.” The leaflet included a list of 19 advantages over its rival, and these were reproduced in volume II of the Two-Cylinder Collector Series published by the Two-Cylinder Club. The claimed advantages were:

1. No possibility of explosion.

2. No possible danger of fire.

3. No tank man and team necessary.

4. A high-priced engineer is unnecessary.

5. No early firing to get up steam.

6. No leaky flues.

7. No boiler repairs of any kind.

8. No boiler cleaning and breaking of handhole bolts.

9. No broken bridges on account of weight.

10. No waiting for steam.

11. No waiting for water.

12. No running into holes or other obstructions, because the operatorstands in front and has full view of the road before him.

13. No time lost making long moves to take on fuel and water.

14. No time lost in turning the engine after the separator is uncoupledand left between the stacks.

15. No consumption of fuel before starting or after stopping.

16. No exact lining with separator necessary.

17. No runaway teams on account of “steam blowing off.”

18. No long belt to contend with.

19. No stopping of the engine when changing from separator to traction.

The Beginnings of John Deere

The Waterloo Boy tractors that took Deere into the market were the R and N models. The Model R was introduced in 1915, with production continuing until 1919, and the Model N was available from 1917 until 1924. This means both Waterloo Boy models were the first tractors to be sold by Deere, even though they never carried the John Deere name. They also introduced Deere to the twin-cylinder horizontal engine layout that remained a successful feature of almost every John Deere production tractor for more than 40 years.

Although at first glance the R and N models look similar, sharing as they do the same layout of engine, transmission and cooling system mounted as individual units on a steel girder frame, there were important differences. Design changes introduced on the Model N included a two-speed transmission instead of the single-speed version found on the Model R. Also, while the big ring gears on the driving wheels of the Model N are almost the same diameter as the wheel itself, on the Model R version, these are little more than half the diameter of the wheel. The Model N radiator is mounted on the left-hand side of the frame, viewed from the driver’s seat, but on most Model Rs it is on the right-hand side. The steering system is a less reliable indicator, as chain-link steering was fitted to all Model R tractors and to Model Ns built before about 1920, but this was replaced by more accurate worm and sector steering from 1920 onwards.

As well as being the first John Deere tractors, the Waterloo Boys possessed other claims to fame. One of the distributors for tractors exported to Britain, where they were sold under the Overtime brand name, was Harry Ferguson—the Overtime almost certainly triggered the early development of the Ferguson System of implement attachment and control (see “Designed for Performance”). In 1920, the Model N Waterloo Boy also became the first tractor to complete a Nebraska test. The results confirmed the 12-25 HP rating at a sedate 750 rpm.

Left: The final drive on the Model R was based on ring gears that were fully exposed to dust and mud, and wear must have been a problem on abrasive or stony soils. The ring gears on the Model R were smaller than those on the Model N, being little more than half the tractor’s rear-wheel diameter. Right: Fuel system detail on the twin-cylinder engine of a 1918 Model R. The Waterloo Boy engine had established a reputation for reliability and pulling power, and it was also mechanically simple and offered better servicing access than many of its more complicated rivals.

Huber Enters the Market

The Van Duzen company, manufacturer of the engine for John Froelich’s first tractor, designed and patented a tractor of its own in 1898. It was, of course, powered by one of its own single-cylinder vertical gasoline engines and, like the Froelich tractor, it featured a gravity feed to deliver gasoline from a holding tank high above the engine. Later in the same year, the Huber Manufacturing Co. based in Marion, Ohio, made a successful takeover bid for Van Duzen and its engine and tractor interests. This brought Huber into the tractor market for the first time, and it is reported to have built a batch of 30 tractors based on the Van Duzen design. If this figure is correct, it probably makes Huber the world’s biggest tractor manufacturer in the period before 1900.

Stopping Power

The priority in the early years of tractor development was reliability, and easy starting was much more important than stopping power.

Brakes were a rarity, and even the Model F Fordson started its production life in 1917 without brakes. At a time when driver safety was a low priority, lack of brakes does not appear to have concerned customers, operators or tractor manufacturers.

An exception was the first Ransomes tractor built in 1903 and featuring two braking systems. One was operated by a foot pedal that disengaged the clutch and then applied a brake to the transmission shaft, and the other was controlled by a hand lever to operate brakes on the rear wheels.

Later, when tractor speeds increased, transmission brakes became standard, operating on the rear wheels only. Since the 1980s some tractors have been equipped with brakes on all four wheels, and the pioneers of this trend include Same, Landini and the JCB high-speed tractor.

Huber was already a leading manufacturer of farm implements and steam traction engines, and, having completed their initial production batch of tractors, they pulled out of the market for more than 10 years to concentrate on other products. They began making tractors again in about 1911, starting with the Farmer’s Tractor, powered by a two-cylinder horizontally opposed engine mounted in the middle of the chassis. The cooling tower for the engine was at the rear, the driver was positioned at the front and the tractor was mounted on a set of Huber steam engine wheels. Production continued with mainly medium-powered tractors using engines supplied by Buda, Stearns and Waukesha. Huber tractors remained popular throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, but production ended during World War II.

The Sterling tractor, which made a brief appearance between 1893 and about 1895, was made in Sterling, Kansas, to the design of a Mr. Hocket. The front view of the Sterling, with its large chimney-type exhaust, looked similar to a steam traction engine, and it has been suggested that this was a deliberate attempt to make it appear more familiar and less frightening to horses passing it on the road. The Sterling specification even included a whistle, useful for signaling to members of a threshing crew.

With the possible exception of the Huber company, tractor production remained a small-scale business until the end of the nineteenth century; however, during the early 1900s, the numbers of tractors built by some of the leading manufacturers grew significantly. One example was the Hart-Parr company, named after its founders, Charles Hart and Charles Parr, who began designing and making engines while both were engineering students at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

The Hart-Parr Company

Hart & Parr was established in Madison before the two men graduated in 1896; when they left the university, they were ready to start building stationary engines commercially. The company name was changed to Hart-Parr in 1897, and, as the business expanded, it became obvious that it needed more space to increase its production capacity. The company was moved to Charles City, Iowa, where Charles Hart had spent his childhood, and it had built its first tractor by 1902.

For tractor number one, Hart-Parr used one of its own twin-cylinder engines with a 30 HP power rating and the oil cooling system the partners had developed while studying at the university. The oil-cooled engine remained a Hart-Parr specialty until well into the 1920s, and most of the tractors with this feature were equipped with a distinctive rectangular cooling tower at the front of the tractor. Benefits claimed for oil cooling included avoiding the risk of frost damage. The oil also allowed higher operating temperatures, thereby improving the combustion of low-grade fuels such as paraffin or kerosene.

During its first 20 years of tractor production, the Hart-Parr company concentrated on making tractors suitable for big prairie farms in the United States and Canada. While the first production tractors were designed mainly for delivering power through the belt pulley for threshing, improvements to the transmission allowed some models built after about 1904 to be used for heavy-duty haulage work and later for direct plowing.

Hart-Parr became one of the leading companies in the heavy duty end of the tractor market, and its range was topped by the 60-100 model, which weighed 26.5 tonnes (26 tons) and had rated outputs of 100 HP at the flywheel and 60 HP at the drawbar. Lighter tractors were introduced during the 1920s, including Hart-Parr’s smallest model, the lightweight 10-20, introduced in 1921, which was powered by a two-cylinder engine. After three years, the 10-20 was replaced by the 12-24 E, which was in turn replaced, in 1928, by an improved H version of the 12-24.

A move back up the power scale brought the 28-50 model, powered by two of the 12-24 two-cylinder engines placed side-by-side to provide four-cylinder power. In 1929, Hart-Parr became part of the Oliver Farm Equipment Co., and this group was later taken over by the White Motor Co.

One of the companies providing competition for Hart-Parr at the heavyweight end of the market was the Advance-Rumely Thresher Co. of LaPorte, Indiana. It had already established a reputation in the farm equipment market for building steam engines in stationary, portable and traction versions, plus a highly successful range of threshing machines. Its first move into the tractor market came in 1908, when John Secor joined the company and developed the paraffin-burning engine from which the company’s OilPull brand name came. (see “Designed for Performance”).

This was the third tractor built by Charles Hart and Charles Parr. It was tested in 1903 and was given an 18–30 HP rating, with the power delivered from a two-cylinder engine. The tractor, with Hart-Parr’s oil cooling system, is displayed at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Later Hart-Parr tractors acquired a more conventional layout and also some weight compared with the company’s earlier designs. This is the H12-24 model displayed at the Farm Museum at Milton, Ontario. It was powered by a twin-cylinder engine with the horizontal layout favored by John Deere.

Rumely Makes its Mark

Like its Hart-Parr rivals, the new Rumely engines used oil instead of water for cooling, and most of the production tractors carried a distinctive rectangular cooling tower at the front, which did little to improve forward visibility from the tractor seat. Rumely tractors were popular, and one of their biggest successes was the Model E built for about 12 years from 1911 and equipped with a single-speed gearbox. The official power rating was 30-60, or 60 HP on the pulley and 30 HP at the drawbar, but these figures were easily exceeded when the Model E was tested in Nebraska, producing almost 50 HP in the maximum drawbar pull test and just over 75 HP on the belt pulley.

The 30-60 and the GasPull model with a 35-70 power rating were the top models in the Rumely range. The smaller versions included the Model H tractor introduced in 1919 and rated at 16-30 HP. The output was achieved at 530 rpm from a two-cylinder engine with 178 mm (7 in) bore and 216 mm (8.5 in) stroke. The Model H was one of the old-style models that disappeared in 1924 after the launch of a new range of smaller, lighter OilPulls featuring unitary construction for the first time in Rumely tractors.

This front view of the H12-28 shows the steering wheel offset to the driver’s right-hand side. This sales feature was favored by many of the leading US manufacturers, and it was designed to give a better view from the driver’s seat when working with a plow, helping to keep furrows straighter.

Although the new models were given more modern styling, the distinctive rectangular cooling tower was retained—no doubt pleasing the many Rumely fans—but the new version was lower and less obtrusive. The first batch of four new models announced in 1924 started with the Model L, the smallest version, which had a 15-25 power rating. The OilPull Model M had a 20-35 rating, and this was increased to 25-45 for the Model R. Although the last of the four new models, the Model S, was introduced as part of the lightweight range, by most standards it was still a heavyweight. It tipped the scales at almost 8.1 tonnes (8 tons) and had a 30 HP rated output at the drawbar and 60 on the belt pulley. Nebraska test figures for the lightweight models show that Rumely was continuing to quote output figures conservatively; an example of this is the 25-45 Model R, which had maximum outputs of 32.6 HP at the drawbar and more than 50 HP on the pulley.

More new and updated models followed in the late 1920s, including the company’s first and last six-cylinder model, the Rumely 6; however, these failed to halt a decline in sales. By 1931, when Rumely was facing serious financial problems, the company was taken over by Allis-Chalmers.

Deering and McCormick

While most of the emphasis in the earliest days of the American tractor industry was on replacing steam engines for threshing work, there were exceptions. These included Deering and McCormick, the companies that joined forces in 1902 to form the Chicago-based International Harvester Co.

Deering and McCormick both used small gasoline engines to power tractors designed as self-propelled mowing machines, and they were both available in small numbers from about 1897. The Deering mower was powered by a two-cylinder horizontal engine and was equipped with a 1.5 m (5 ft) wide cutterbar. The McCormick version was called the Auto-Mower and used a 6 HP gasoline engine. Both were designed as small, lightweight machines based on a three-wheeled design, with the single wheel at the front. The Auto-Mower was equipped with tiller steering designed for one-handed operation, while the Deering mower used a small-diameter car-type steering wheel.

The cost of developing a brand-new engine can be high; when the Hart-Parr company decided to add a new 50 HP model to its list of tractors in 1927, it found an ingenious way to avoid the outlay of a new engine. Instead of developing a new 50 HP power unit, it mounted two of its existing 24 HP engines side by side to produce the new 28-50 model.

The Deering and McCormick companies were both actively developing export sales to Europe by the end of the nineteenth century; in 1901, their self-propelled mowers competed on level terms in an official test in a field near Paris. Both apparently performed well, with the McCormick Auto-Mower working at a steady 8 km/h (5 mph). A report by the judges also commented favorably on the fact that it was easy to remove the engine from the Deering machine and use it as a stationary power unit. This seems a somewhat odd comment, as it would have been more convenient to have been able to leave the engine mounted on the mower for stationary use.

One of the most ingenious but short-lived attempts to bring low-cost tractor power to smaller farms came from the Adams Husker Company of Marysville, Ohio, when it announced its Little Traction Gear model in 1909 or 1910. This was a tractor with no engine, which obviously helped to reduce the price to the farmer. It was supplied with an empty space where the engine should be, and it was aimed at those farmers who already owned a suitable slow-speed stationary engine which they could mount in the space provided.

A chain and sprocket supplied with the tractor was used to link the engine to the tractor’s transmission, supplying power to the pulley belt and by another chain drive to the rear wheels. C. H. Wendell in his Encyclopedia of American Farm Tractors says that the Little Traction Gear was available in three sizes, one designed for engines up to 9 HP, a medium-sized version for engines of 13 HP or less and the largest, which was built to accept up to 20 HP.

Hart-Parr’s big 28-50 had the same offset driving position featured on its H12-28. Production of the 28-50 started in 1927 and continued until about 1929, when the tractor range was completely updated after four companies merged in 1929 to form the Oliver Farm Equipment Co.

The Birth of British Tractors

Britain was the first European country to experiment with tractor power, and the first tractor to be built commercially in Britain arrived in 1896. It was designed and built by Richard Hornsby and Sons of Grantham, Lincolnshire, and its full official name was the Hornsby-Akroyd Patent Safety Oil Traction Engine. The makers promised four versions of the tractor powered by engines with 16, 20, 25 and 32 HP output, but it is unlikely that all of these were built. The engine was a semi-diesel based on a Stuart and Binney design, built by Hornsby under a license agreement. The layout was horizontal, and it was started by using a blow lamp and ran on paraffin with the power delivered through a transmission with three forward gears and one reverse.

Although the Hornsby tractor was designed like a traction engine for stationary work, it was also suitable for heavy haulage jobs on farms or on public roads, as indicated by the extremely strong chassis and three-speed gearbox. The sales leaflet emphasized the tractor’s haulage capabilities, suggesting that the 16 HP model would handle a 20.3- to 25.4-tonne (20- to 25-ton) load on level ground. The 32 HP model was claimed to be suitable for loads weighing up to 50.8 tonnes (50 tons).

When the new tractor was demonstrated before the machinery awards judges at the 1897 Royal Show, they were favorably impressed by its maneuverability and its ability to cope with the test circuit that included driving over railway sleepers and crossing soft ground. They obviously compared the Hornsby against steam traction engines and included “non-liability to explode” in their list of reasons for deciding to give the new tractor a silver medal. Steam engine comparisons were also prominent in a description of the tractor published in 1896 in a leading journal, Implement and Machinery Review.

“The driver has a good deal easier time of it than in the case of a steam-engine,” said the Implement and Machinery Review’s report. “There is no fire to be frequently stoked, nor are there any water or steam gauges to be kept under supervision. Indeed, the duties are so comparatively light that one man can easily undertake the driving without any assistance, which, of course, means a considerable saving to the user.” Another feature praised in the report was the fact that the engine’s exhaust system had been “rendered silent” to avoid frightening horses.

Early versions of the Rumely OilPull tractors were noted for their large size, heavy weight and the distinctive cooling tower at the front. The tractor in the photograph is a Model H, introduced in 1919 with a 30 HP twin-cylinder engine and the familiar, but much-reduced, cooling tower.

A New Commercial Model

Prices for the Hornsby tractor started at £500 for the 16 HP model, which was supplied with a pair of carriage lamps for driving on the road, a tool kit including spanners plus a hammer and chisels, a waterproof cover, and a rear-mounted winch and a cable for pulling timber. There was also a bucket, and this was used to top up the water in the cooling system, which evaporated or leaked about 250 liters (65 gallons) during a day’s work.

A pre-heater on Rumely OilPull tractors, as seen here on a Model H tractor built between 1919 and 1924, used waste heat from the engine exhaust to raise the temperature of paraffin or kerosene fuel for easier combustion. The use of cheaper, lower-grade fuels was a major attraction.

Only one of the tractors was sold in Britain. The customer, who owned a large estate in Surrey, became the first person in Britain to buy a tractor. Another three or four of the tractors were exported to Australia, and one of these was recently brought back to its country of origin by a vintage tractor enthusiast. Richard Hornsby also entered one of its tractors in an evaluation test organized by the secretary of state for war. The British Army wanted a tractor to replace some of its steam traction engines to deal with transport work such as moving heavy guns and other equipment. There was a £1000 prize for the winning manufacturer and, more importantly, the possibility of a lucrative contract. The Hornsby tractor won the prize, but the contract was never awarded, and the company’s subsequent efforts to interest the army in a track-laying version of the tractor—years before the army decided it urgently needed tanks—also failed to win an order.

The design of the Hornsby tractors was obviously influenced by steam traction engine ideas, but other British manufacturers were designing their tractors for a wider range of jobs. This was the approach used by the Marshall company of Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, when it announced its first tractor in 1906. It weighed 4.6 tonnes (4.5 tons) and was designed mainly for export, achieving modest success in Canada against mainly US competition.

A paraffin-burning, twin-cylinder engine developing 30 HP powered the early versions of the Marshall, and the engine was water-cooled, losing 9.1 to 13.6 liters (2 to 3 gallons) each day through evaporation and what Marshall called “inevitable leakages.” Hot water from the individually jacketed engine cylinders was circulated to the top of the radiator, moving down to the bottom of the radiator as it cooled, and it was then piped to the main tank at the rear before making a return journey to the cylinders.

The OilPull brand name was designed to advertise the Rumely tractors’ ability to burn lower-grade fuel, a feature which helped to boost sales of the OilPull. This was further emphasized by the phrasing of the guarantee displayed on the side of the cooling tower of this Model H tractor.

The First Marshall

The first Marshall tractor was equipped with a pulley belt for stationary work and with a three-speed gearbox for haulage. However, when the tractor was announced, the manufacturers gained useful publicity by demonstrating its performance in a non-stop plowing marathon. The marathon lasted 24 hours and, during that time, the Marshall used 200 liters (44 gallons) of paraffin to plow nine hectares (22 acres).

There were also some British manufacturers offering a much more versatile approach to tractor design in the early 1900s, and many agricultural historians regard these as the real ancestors of the general-purpose farm tractor. All the tractors they built were small enough and light enough for field work in a wide range of soil conditions, and they were designed as a replacement for the farm horse, instead of competing with the steam engine.

Some members of this small group of pioneers made only a brief appearance in the tractor market, quickly deciding to concentrate on other products, and this group includes Ransomes, the company that put the steam engine on wheels in the early 1840s. They built a prototype tractor in 1903, using a 20 HP Sims engine designed for the car industry, and the general layout appears to have been influenced by early twentieth-century car design. A three-ratio gearbox controlled the speed of the belt pulley, as well as the forward speed, and this gave the driver the choice of 220, 450 or 1000 rpm on the pulley with the engine set at its rated speed.

As well as having a pulley for stationary work, the Ransomes tractor was also designed for direct traction plowing, with a claimed 0.2 hectares (0.5 acres) per hour work rate and 6.8 liters (1.5 gallons) per hour gasoline consumption. The tractor was also said to be capable of pulling a “7- to 8-ton load” up a “steep” hill at 11.3 km/h (7 mph).

Drake and Fletcher, an engineering company based in Maidstone, Kent, demonstrated its first tractor in 1903. It built its own three-cylinder gasoline engine to power the tractor, claiming a 16 HP output, and the tractor was designed to provide maximum versatility, as the following report in the July 3, 1903, issue of the Hardware Trades Journal suggests.

The tractor is “designed for all kinds of farm and general estate work, including plowing, cultivating, reaping, binding, mowing, hop washing, etc. and is also capable of being used for stationary work.” The reference to hop washing is a result of the fact that the tractor was built in Britain’s leading hop-growing area.

New Possibilites in Tractor Power

Professor John Scott, an agricultural college lecturer who turned to tractor development, was one of the first people to understand the possibilities offered by tractor power. In 1906, he told a farmers’ club meeting in Scotland that the tractor could do all the work on a farm in about half the time required with horses and with about one-third of the manpower. “The time seems fast approaching when motor power will be universally used on the farm, and farm laborers will know more about motors than about horses,” he told his skeptical audience, many of whom were probably making money by selling oats or hay for horse feed or by breeding horses for sale to other farmers.

Scott, who lived near Edinburgh, built a series of tractors with features that were years ahead of their time, and he achieved little recognition or commercial success. His first tractor was displayed at the 1900 Royal Show and carried a cultivator/drill combination mounted on the rear. The cultivator, with sets of rotary tines powered by a chain drive from the tractor’s rear axle, was probably the earliest ancestor of the power harrows that would eventually become popular 60 years later. Scott’s idea of combining a seed drill and a cultivator to do two jobs in one operation was about 70 years ahead of its time. Another Scott tractor announced in 1904 featured a power take-off designed to drive a front-mounted mower or reaper. The power take-off did not become widely used for at least 30 years, and the idea of mounting equipment on the front of the tractor took another 70 years to achieve limited acceptance.

H. P. Saunderson of Elstow, Bedford, was another member of the group of highly inventive British pioneers who helped to develop the tractor as a general-purpose power unit, and in commercial terms he was easily the most successful. He used the name Universal for his tractors to stress their versatility, and his first success came in 1906 when an improved version of his first Universal model powered by a 30 HP engine won a Royal Show silver medal.

The operator’s platform on this Rumely shows how uncomfortable and potentially dangerous a tractor driver’s job could be. On this tractor, as on a number of OilPulls, there is no seat for the operator. There is also nothing to stop the operator from accidentally stepping or falling backwards off the narrow platform and into the path of the implement following the tractor.

Marshall was one of Britain’s leading manufacturers of steam engines, and it made a determined effort to move into the tractor market. Because of its steam engine, it concentrated on big tractors, including a 30 HP model announced in 1906 powered by a paraffin-burning engine.

A special feature of early Saunderson designs was a load-carrying platform over the rear section of the main frame, allowing the tractors to be used as load carriers as well as for pulling equipment and powering machines from the belt pulley. The load platform was designed to carry up to 2 tonnes (2 tons) and could be manually tipped, helping to make the Saunderson tractor an effective replacement for two or three horses. To prove its point, the company invited editors of leading farming magazines to a demonstration in 1906.

The event started after lunch with a Saunderson Universal pulling two 1.8 m (6 ft) binders to harvest 0.8 hectares (2 acres) of wheat. When the crop was cut, the binder was unhitched and the same tractor pulled a threshing machine into the field. The tractor then worked with its load platform to carry the sheaves to the thresher. Once this job was finished, it was used as a stationary power source to drive the threshing machine. The pulley was then used again to drive a grinder to turn the freshly harvested grain into flour. At this stage, a baker took over, turning the flour into dough and baking loaves of bread in an oven, while the tractor went on to plow the recently harvested area, cultivate it and then sow the seed for the next crop of wheat.

Within five hours, one crop had been harvested and prepared for baking, and the next year’s crop had been sown, all with the power of one tractor, and the journalists were able to eat freshly baked bread from the newly harvested crop. Now, almost 100 years later, the fact that one tractor can do so many different jobs does not seem surprising; however, in 1906, it was an impressive display of the way in which farm mechanization would soon develop.

Saunderson later abandoned the load platform—transport work was probably easier with the tractor pulling a trailer—and within a few years it had become Britain’s biggest tractor manufacturer with a flourishing export business. Its best-selling model was the 25 HP Universal it built during World War I, but competition from cheaper, more up-to-date models eventually put it out of business; the Saunderson company was taken over by Crossley of Manchester, a leading engine manufacturer.

Richard Hornsby’s Patent Safety Oil Traction Engine was built in small numbers from 1896, powered by a semi-diesel engine. It was designed for stationary and heavy haulage work. A Hornsby became the first tractor to be sold in Britain and another was the first tractor imported to Australia.

The Impact of Dan Albone

The most innovative of the early tractor pioneers in Britain was Dan Albone. His name might well have been remembered alongside those of Harry Ferguson and Henry Ford; however, though fondly remembered by just a few tractor history enthusiasts, he is now almost forgotten.

Albone was raised on a small farm or market garden and, like Ferguson and Ford, his engineering skills were all self-taught. He started a business as a bicycle manufacturer and, in 1898, designed and built his own car. His interest in tractors started in about 1896, but he did not start building his first tractor until 1901. He chose a three-wheeled design, with a single wheel at the front, and the engine was mid-mounted and powered the single-speed gearbox through a cone clutch. A large metal tank beside the driver at the rear of the tractor held the water for the cooling system and also put plenty of weight over the driving wheels. It was powered by various car-type engines, most of them made by Payne and Bates, and the power started at about 8 HP and was increased steadily to provide more performance until it reached 24 HP in 1913. The tractor was called the Ivel, which was the trade name Albone had used for his bicycles and also the name of the river running through Biggleswade, Bedfordshire, where his business was based.

Few of Britain’s farmers were ready for tractor power in the early years of the twentieth century. The big acreage farms and estates were equipped with steam engines and the rest relied on horsepower, and British tractor makers were forced to find overseas markets for most of their sales. By 1906, Ivel tractors had been sold in 18 countries from Canada to Australia and from Nigeria to Cuba, and the successes included an order for 18 tractors for the Philippines.

The Ivel was described as “undoubtedly the great attraction” at the 1904 Paris Show. Furthermore, a Canadian farmer was quoted as describing it as “the new farmer’s friend,” and a feature about tractor development in America and Britain in a leading publication in Argentina said the Ivel was “the most successful agricultural motor yet placed on the market.” After a Ministry of Agriculture demonstration in Italy, the organizers were so impressed by the Ivel that they gave Albone a special medal to commemorate the event.

As well as developing export markets, Albone showed extraordinary imagination in seeking new opportunities to sell his tractors in Britain. He kept an Ivel tractor and a range of machinery on land near the factory where demonstrations of farming by tractor power were held once every fortnight. One of his tractors, complete with crew dressed in firemen’s uniforms, was demonstrated as a fire engine, using the belt pulley to power the pump. He also turned an Ivel tractor into a military ambulance, with steel cladding to protect the driver and two rear doors made of steel plate opening outwards to provide some protection for stretcher bearers walking behind the tractor. Real bullets were fired at the tractor to test the armor plating during a demonstration for the army, and Dan Albone showed how the pulley could be used to power ice-making plant or equipment for purifying water for a field hospital. He also demonstrated the tractor’s ability to haul medical supplies over rough ground—despite this, the military chiefs decided they still preferred horses.

Albone died in 1906 at the age of 46, long before either he or his tractors had reached their full potential. After his death, development work on the tractors slowed, and, without his energy and imagination, the company lost its momentum. Instead of being a leader in design and marketing, the Ivel company made an unsuccessful attempt to import a Hart-Parr tractor before ceasing to trade in about 1915.

Growing Influence in Europe

Although the United States and Britain dominated the early stages of tractor development, there was some activity elsewhere in Europe. Nicholas Cugnot, a French farmer’s son, is credited with building the first self-propelled vehicle, using steam power, almost 250 years ago, while Otto built the first successful internal combustion engine in Germany. The French and the Germans used their early leadership, however, to develop motor cars instead of tractors.

The Ivel established the idea of lightweight, versatile tractors suitable for smaller acreages commercially. The large tank beside the driver’s seat holds cooling water for the engine and also provides additional weight over the driving wheels to encourage better traction.

A tractor designed and built by a Frenchman called Gougis in about 1907 included a power take-off shaft to power-trailed machines. Gougis successfully demonstrated the drive shaft with a binder, but it seems that he did not attempt to develop his idea commercially. This was just three years after Professor Scott had shown his PTO–driven, front-mounted binder in England, and the idea did not become widely available until the early 1920s.

German interest was concentrated initially on using electricity to power field work such as plowing, but one exception to this was the plowing tractor Pfluglokomotive designed by Deutz, a company as old as the four-stroke engine. Deutz built two different plowing tractors in 1907, and one of these appears to have been the first two-way or bi-directional tractor.

The Pfluglokomotive featured an upright steering wheel and control levers at the center of the tractor, with a seat on each side allowing the driver to face either forward or to the rear while operating the controls. There were four-furrow plows mounted at the front and the rear of the tractor, each with its own cable-operated lift system operated by hand levers. The tractor unit was driven back and forth across the field by using each of the plows and also changing seats alternately. Although the tractor was built by Deutz and was powered by a 40 HP Deutz engine, the two-way plowing equipment was called the System Brey after its inventor.

Although the Deutz tractor and plowing system showed considerable ingenuity, it failed to develop commercially. The Deutz company later became known as Deutz-Fahr, for many years Germany’s biggest tractor and machinery manufacturer. It was later taken over by the Italian-based Same tractor company, now called Same Deutz-Fahr.

A Lasting Future

While the steam engine started the power farming revolution, it was the tractor power pioneered in the United States and Europe that achieved a lasting impact on the structure and economics of food production. The scale of this achievement is indicated by the decline in the number of animals working on farms. Census figures for the United States show the number of horses and mules on farms peaked at 26 million in 1920, when the number of tractors was almost 250,000. From 1920 onward, the census figures for working animals were lower each year, reaching fewer than 7.8 million in 1950, while tractor numbers had moved steadily upward to 3.6 million in the same year.

There were similar trends in Canada. The cultivated area in the prairie provinces had reached 17.4 million hectares (43 million acres) in 1921, the number of working horses had reached 2.24 million—an all-time high—and there were exactly 38,465 tractors. Thirty years later, the cropped area was more than 27.1 million hectares (67 million acres), the working horse population was 696,000 and farmers used the power provided by a fleet of 237,000 tractors.

Tractor power achieved similar results on British farms, reducing the number of working horses from their 1,137,000 peak in 1910 to just a few hundred by the late 1990s, when they were mainly used in small numbers for forestry work.

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