Steam Tractor - Development (Great Britain)

Development (Great Britain)

Owing to differences in soil conditions, the development of steam-powered agricultural machines differed considerably on either side of the Atlantic.

In Great Britain, a number of traction engine builders attempted to produce a design of agricultural engine that could pull a plough directly, in place of a team of horses. However, the heavier and wetter soils found in Britain meant that these designs were not successful — being less economical to use than the team of horses they were intended to replace. These engines were also known as "steam tractors". Instead, farmers resorted to cable-hauled ploughing using ploughing engines.

A distinctive example of a British-designed (agricultural) steam tractor is the Garrett Suffolk Punch, a 1917 design intended to compete directly with internal combustion-powered alternatives.

Read more about this topic:  Steam Tractor

Famous quotes containing the word development:

    “Such condition of suspended judgment indeed, in its more genial development and under felicitous culture, is but the expectation, the receptivity, of the faithful scholar, determined not to foreclose what is still a question—the “philosophic temper,” in short, for which a survival of query will be still the salt of truth, even in the most absolutely ascertained knowledge.”
    —Walter Pater (1839–1894)