Item — HN Reader

Sorry, they do.

A farmer friend of my dad had a large dryland farm, and decided to hook two tractors together. He removed the front wheels from each, connected the back tractor to the hitch of the front tractor, linked the throttles together and had a double-size tractor, with four high-traction wheels. Hydraulics from the front tractor were used to steer the tractors.

This same fellow built a developing tank for b&w movie film, and did a lot of time lapse photography. This is on a farm in Montana in the 1960s.

He built a jig to help build these for other farmers who wanted them.

Later, Case and other manufacturers populated the dryland farms with something that looked very similar.

What many people do not realize is that rural farm america has had a more thorough impact on daily life by technology than any other segment of life. From the beginning of my grandfather's generation through the end of my father's generation saw a nearly two orders of magnitude improvement in productivity. Every aspect of daily life was affected.

"Busy farming" in our life meant plowing the fields, seeding, harvesting, which involves machinery, or in my grandfather's generation horses. Everybody had a shop, which included torches, electric and acetylene, a wide range of tools. Something breaks, which it often does at the worst possible time, you generally fix it. Changed plugs in all your vehicles, gapped the plug, points, changed the oil, put in a new head gasket. During family get-togethers, my Dad and Uncles would sit around while waiting for dinner figuring out how to make something work better. Innovation is part of farming.

So the headline is wrong, the article is wrong, and the quote it points to is wrong. Some of the comments do offer some correction. And apparently there is a bit of "Blub" phenomenon going on with what does "Busy Farming" mean.

1 comments

That headline didn't pass the smell test for me, so I decided to do some quick research... who did invent the tractor, anyway?

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/220609/John-Froehl...

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, it was John Froehlich - an Iowa blacksmith - who invented the first gasoline-powered tractor. Apparently a Frenchman (nicolas cugnot) had a steam-powered tractor in 1769, but apparently this was not used for agriculture.

Can't find precisely where he lived, but I imagine that as an Iowan blacksmith he had some experience with the demands and opportunities in farm work.

Any bets that he grew up on a farm?

But the blogger's original point is that people with a different point of view make inventions outside their own itch. My contention is really the opposite.

A quick google search indicates that he ran a feed mill and took a threshing crew to ND every year, and the tractor was developed to address problems he encountered doing that work.

One of a few rough sources: http://iagenweb.org/boards/clayton/biographies/index.cgi?rea...

So, yeah, it's actually a perfect example of someone taking his technical skills and using them to come up with an innovative solution to something close to home.

If this page is correct

http://www.geocities.com/motorcity/downs/9828/fergy_12.htm

it was probably somewhere near Waterloo

    > This was the first tractor built by Froelich who with
    > others formed the Waterloo GasolineTraction Engine
    > Company. This company manufactured the Waterloo Boy
    > tractors starting in 1914. The Waterloo Company was
    > purchased by John Deere in 1918 and became the John
    > DeereTractor Company.

As of not too long ago, almost everyone was somehow involved in agriculture, and if they managed not to be, they were surrounded by people that were. this is a link to a good ted talk on how recent it is that we got the luxury not to think about food, and ideas on what that means: http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/louise_fresco_on_feeding_...