Farm Tractors. Michael Williams
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