We have a new tractor on the farm these days. My daughter and son-in-law have purchased a bright red, brand-spankin' new Mahindra 2538. I have previously supposed that since I grew up on a farm and spent many hours running a tractor, then I should be quite familiar with driving most any tractor. Not so! I'm having to expand my education to learn how to start the new tractor, how to handle the new Hydrostat transmission, how the levers work to control the front loader, how to activate the power-take-off, which lever lifts the blade in back, how to activate the glow plug to start the diesel engine, and so on and on.
Time-wise, I was pretty much a 1950s farm tractor operator, familiar mainly with Ford tractors, and to a lesser extent with small Allis-Chalmers, John Deere and Ferguson tractors. Although farm tractors of various sorts began to be available almost as early as automobiles, the major transition from horse farming to tractor farming took place in the 1930s and 1940s. We got our first tractor for the farm in 1948, a 1945 Ford-Ferguson tractor with a special step-up unit attached to the front of the transmission which gave the tractor a high and low range for each standard gear. It provided what had previously been a very slow tractor a "road gear" which could run up to 25 miles an hour. That was much better than moving at 9 MPH down the road in third gear with the motor racing. We regarded our tractor as pretty much top-of-the-line for its day. It was outfitted with a three-point hitch and a Ferguson hydraulic lift system, which at the time was very fine technology.
Tractors were primarily invented for heavy pulling, powering pull-behind implements such as moldboard plows. Early plows were much like the common horse-drawn turning plow but often with wheels and multiple hand-operated levers to lift the plow bottoms, control the plow's working depth, raise it for transport, and so on. The plow's "hitch" attached to the drawbar of the tractor by a heavy steel pin, and the tractor's job was to pull it across the field, turning the soil furrow by furrow. I understand the term "tractor" comes from the concept of a "traction engine." Initially, a tractor's usefulness was to provide traction and pulling power, pretty much as horses had done for farming for centuries before. One early innovation which greatly expanded the versatility and usefulness of tractors was the addition of gear-driven pulleys to power belt-driven machines. By powering other machines through heavy belts, the engine power of the tractor could be applied to such tasks as threshing grain, grinding corn, chopping silage, sawing firewood, powering lumber mills, operating hammer mills, pumping water, and doing many other jobs. The addition of electric systems with batteries and generators made possible much easier and safer engine starts, eliminating the old hand crank, and introduced the possibility of night operation. But even with these advances, tractor operation still required much heavy physical work by the driver.
One of the really revolutionary advances in farm tractors was the addition of hydraulic systems. By the mid-1940s, many tractors, like our Ford-Ferguson, were being outfitted with hydraulic lift systems. This innovation, along with power-take-off shafts, enormously eased the work involved in farming with a tractor. Much of the physical effort formerly required of the operator, to lift implements, or adjust implement settings, could be handled by tractor power. Hydraulic fluid under high pressure opened up many new ways to apply tractor power to the tasks of farming.
Probably the farmers of years ago, who pioneered the use of steam tractors, gas tractors and diesel tractors in farming, would regard today's tractor operators as living in the lap of luxury. Many farm tractors now have weather-tight cabs, air conditioners and heaters, radios and communications equipment, power steering, on-the-go power shifting, touch-of-a-button controls. Who knows what coming years may bring -- self-driving tractors?
I often think how in my early days, a phone was a phone and only a phone. A radio was a radio and only a radio. A calculator was a calculator and only a calculator. Now we have units which combine many gadgets. Phones today are not really phones in the traditional sense. Smart phones are actually phone-like radios. They have so many features not available on traditional phones. They are cameras, with email and texting provisions; they can send pictures to people across the world. They are data assistants, calendars, schedulers, web browsers, instruments of social communication.
What are they Not?
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Editor's note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge and can be contacted by email at [email protected], or call 621-1621.
Editorial on 11/15/2017