New Plough To Shorten Fanner’s Day

Northern Advocate, 5 September 1939, Page 10

New Plough To Shorten Fanner’s Day

Mr Henry Ford demonstated at his estate at Dearborn, Michigan, a new mechaical plough which he claims is going to “revolutionise agriculture” all over the world, cables a New York correspondent. The machine will, he adds, make the horse economically obsolete. It is a four-wheeld tractor coupled to a plough and other mechanical farming units. Invented by an Irish engineer, Mr Harry G. Ferguson, it has a hydraulic attachment which keeps the blade of the plough automatically at any depth. “Economic Effect”

There is a weight-shifting device enabling the tractor to rear itself up and free itself if the buried blade becomes wedged. The big rubber-tyred wheels ai'e braked separately so that the tractor can turn quickly.

Mr Ford said that the new unit will shorten the farmer’s day and help to bring about the new age of mechanical farming which “could have the important economic effect, if adopted on a world-wide scale, of relieving the pressure of land-hungry nations for greater shares of the earth’s surface.”