Farm Tractors. Michael Williams
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