History
The first powered farm implements in the early 19th century were portable engines – steam engines on wheels that could be used to drive mechanical farm machinery by way of a flexible belt. Around 1850, the first traction engines were developed from these, and were widely adopted for agricultural use. The first tractors were steam-powered plowing engines. They were used in pairs, placed on either side of a field to haul a plow back and forth between them using a wire cable. Where soil conditions permitted (as in the United States), steam tractors were used to direct-haul plows, but in the UK and elsewhere, plowing engines were used for cable-hauled plowing, instead. Steam-powered agricultural engines remained in use well into the 20th century until reliable internal combustion engines had been developed.
In 1892, John Froelich invented and built the first gasoline/petrol-powered tractor in Clayton County, Iowa, USA. A Van Duzen single-cylinder gasoline engine was mounted on a Robinson engine chassis, which could be controlled and propelled by Froelich's gear box. After receiving a patent, Froelich started up the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company, investing all of his assets, which by 1895, all would be lost and his business resigned to become a failure.
After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Charles W. Hart and Charles H. Parr developed a two-cylinder gasoline engine and set up their business in Charles City, Iowa. In 1903, the firm built 15 "tractors", a term with Latin roots coined by Hart and Parr, and a combination of the words traction and power. Their 14,000-pound #3 is the oldest surviving internal combustion engine tractor in the United States, and is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. The two-cylinder engine has a unique hit-and-miss firing cycle that produced 30 horsepower at the belt and 18 at the drawbar.
In Britain, the first recorded tractor sale was the oil-burning Hornsby-Ackroyd Patent Safety Oil traction engine, in 1897. However, the first commercially successful design was Dan Albone's three-wheel Ivel tractor of 1902. In 1908, the Saunderson Tractor and Implement Co. of Bedford introduced a four-wheel design, and went on to become the largest tractor manufacturer outside the U.S. at that time.
While unpopular at first, these gasoline-powered machines began to catch on in the 1910s, when they became smaller and more affordable. Henry Ford introduced the Fordson, the first mass-produced tractor, in 1917. They were built in the U.S., Ireland, England and Russia, and by 1923, Fordson had 77% of the U.S. market. The Fordson dispensed with a frame, using the strength of the engine block to hold the machine together. By the 1920s, tractors with gasoline-powered internal combustion engines had become the norm.
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