Power on the Farm: A History of Tractors from the 1800’s Through the Age of Steam
By Dan Thompson
Mention a farm and images of great wheeled machines rolling across a field spring up. After two centuries of evolution, tractors have become a farmer’s most reliable tool and an icon of American agriculture. As inventors around the world slowly put ideas together, farm machinery grew from a useful novelty to a necessary workhorse. New inventions regularly replaced older ways as better methods and products pushed tractors to a position of unequaled importance on the farm. Modern tractors, though, look very little like their ancestors, and tractor technology faced a bumpy road before it reached its full potential.
Before tractors roamed the prairies like the mechanized beasts of burden they are, real livestock and the sweat of farmers were the primary sources of energy on the farm. The mechanical technologies they powered were crude and supplied mainly by local blacksmiths. While this was sufficient for small farms at the beginning of the 19th century, change was coming. The American expansion westward found vast tracts of land just asking to be planted, and an increased demand for produce provided incentive to do so. To meet the demands of the agricultural expansion, farmers were faced with a choice: work ever harder for uncertain results, or get clever.
Many farmers opting for the latter course began to look seriously at mechanization. Early machinery took the form of horse or sweep powered threshing machines, which greatly sped up production but had many drawbacks. For one, most were easily damaged in the rough fields. Moreover, all machines of the time relied on the power of humans and livestock, which required rest, housing, and feeding. Worse, most farm machinery required great care and consistency in its use. Farmers often found it hard to convince their animals to walk quietly at exactly the same pace all day, and the machines suffered in efficiency as a result.
To overcome these problems, many farmers turned to a new power source: the steam engine, which provided steady power and could work all year round. Of course, the first farm steam engines, in use by 1830, were of limited utility. They were huge chunks of metal bolted to immobile foundations, and work was brought to the motor instead of the other way around. Primarily used to drive belts that worked farm machinery, they were best suited for work on Southern plantations, where they drove cotton gins, grinders, and mills.
The refinement and propagation of steam technology was initially slow. Thanks to the limited transportation and communication available, the hundreds of inventors working to improve farm mechanization could not collaborate. Because of this, discoveries made by one person could not be used, refined, and added to by any one else. Furthermore, once reliable machines were produced, marketing and distribution was very difficult, especially to the western areas of the country. Getting an engine to California, for example, meant shipping it around South America- hardly an efficient way to send anything, much less a two ton piece of steel that was subject to breaking down even when it was attached to the ground.
Despite their limitations and the difficulties in their production, steam engines gained in popularity during the early 1800s. By 1838, many of the 1,860 engines in America were found on farms. As travel and communication became easier, the barriers to widespread steam power use began to fall. Machine producers found innovative ways to market their products, from penny postcards, to traveling salesmen, to showy competitions at fairs. As the network of railroad tracks expanded, getting new tractors into the hands of purchasers became easier as well. Moreover, huge technological leaps were made during the mid-1800s, making engines both more useful to farmers and more economically viable for producers.
By the 1840s, the stationary steam engine was insufficient for farmers cultivating ever more produce on more acres. To meet the demands of western farmers, steam engine producers began to make their devices portable, although ‘portable’ in this case is a relative term. Essentially stationary engines with wheels bolted on, they still required livestock to move and steer them. To make matters worse, these engines also used huge amounts of fuel- in terms of both combustibles and water- which had to be carted around the fields all day. Despite these drawbacks, portable steam engines continued to increase in popularity. By the 1880s, they could produce over 25 horse power and allowed many farmers to harvest one million bushels or more of wheat in one season.
The 1870s saw another major step forward in mechanized agriculture when designers produced the first self propelled motors, so called steam traction engines. This was the birth of what is recognized today as a tractor, but, like the first portable steam engines, there was a caveat. While the engine did provide power to propel itself, draft animals were still needed to steer early models and provide extra help on rough terrain.
By 1882, the first self steered engine was put into production by Russel and Company of Massillon, Ohio. Although early steering systems were crude, refinements in steering and output soon had steam traction engines growing in size, power, and popularity. The biggest machines provided 150 hp and weighed 20 tons, using 3 tons of coal and 3000 gallons of water every day. In 1910, farm steam engines in America put out a combined 3.6 million horsepower, and steam traction engine production peaked three years later, with 10,000 machines sold.
The days of the steam traction engine were numbered, however, and by 1920, only 1,700 units were made. Only five years later, production had dropped to nearly zero. The steam traction engine was a victim of its limitations in reliability, safety, and efficiency. Steam engines have always had a history of exploding catastrophically, and even engines that managed to hold together always looked and sounded as if they were on the edge of self destruction. Sparks from the firebox posed another major risk, and numerous structure fires in the late 1800s were attributed to steam engines. A strong sense of self preservation had many farmers looking for alternative power sources, a search that culminated in gasoline and diesel engines.
