Department of History Midwestern University Wichita Falls, Texas
76308
The history of Henry Ford’s involvement in experimentation
with and production of agricultural tractors is both long and
interesting. Ford’s early interest culminated with the famous
Fordson in 1917 and in 1939, Ford Motor Company and Harry Ferguson
pooled resources and engineering talent to produce one of the first
three-point hitch tractors, the 9N. Ford early became interested in
mechanizing farm power from experiences on his father’s
Dear-horn, Michigan farm. Yet, the huge, soil compacting steam and
early gas traction engines failed to meet Ford’s desire for a
power unit small enough for average sized farms. As early as 1880
Ford constructed a small steam engine to pull a plow. When his
interests shifted to automotive problems, tractor development
lagged.
In 1907, Ford built an ‘automobile plow’. 11 showed the
effect of automotive design and reportedly ran forty feet before
breaking down. In the summer in 1908, Ford instructed Joseph Galamb
and C. J. Smith to build a tractor. In three days the two engineers
produced a ‘tractor’ made of a Model B Ford car chassis
with wagon wheels for front guide wheels and grain binder wheels
for drive wheels in the rear. The tractor was rated around
twenty-four horsepower and pulled a binder on Ford’s Dearborn
farm but was plagued with overheating and lack of power for
plowing.
In 1913, attempts were made with a modified Model T car chassis.
A heavier frame and a worm gear transmission were added. Yet, the
two such tractors constructed lacked durability. The dream of a
small, four-wheel tractor was very elusive. Phillip S. Rose, then
in the Agricultural Engineering Department at North Dakota State
College, claimed the 1913 Ford tractors used fifteen gallons of
water daily, the steering was unperfected and the engine bearings
needed tightening every two weeks.
Ford’s purported conversion to the potential of the
internal-combustion engine came in 1910, when he went to the
Winnipeg Motor Contest. The field of gas tractor contestants had
grown from a mere handful; of half-hearted competitors to an
industry-wide struggle for victory and publicity. The Motor Contest
was originally intended to help produce a light, oil engine
tractor, something that the contest did not do as long as it was
conducted. There was an apparent demand for a light, four-wheel
tractor and Ford intended to tap it. Farmers, Ford was told by a
friend, were never riper for anything and the plucking should not
be postponed.
It was World War I which gave impetus to Ford’s tractor
production plans. English need (caused by German submarine warfare)
caused Percival L. Perry, head of Ford in England, to ask for
permission to produce tractors in the British Isles. Henry Ford
responded, but air raids on London and the shift to plane
production caused abandonment of tractor production in England for
some years. Ford and his son, Edsel, faced with a sceptical group
of stockholders, had formed a separate tractor division at the
Highland Park plant in 1915. With Charles E. Sorenson in charge
Ford began tractor development in earnest. England was urgently
appealing for tractors to produce food for a wartime economy and
Ford was assured of a market.
Sent in by Lowell Carlson, Department of History, Midwestern
University, Wichita Falls, Texas 76308. (See article – Early Ford
Tractor Development.)
The tractor, called the Fordson, began production in October
with Fordson Number One rolling off the line October 8, 1917.
Within seven months a British order for 7,000 Fordsons was filled.
Fordson Number One went to Luther Burbank, the great
horticulturalist and Fordson Number Two went to Thomas Edison, both
old friends of Henry Ford. The tractor was a product of mass
production and farmers unable or unwilling to purchase a tractor
were attracted to its reasonable, though not low, price and its
durability.
Officially, the tractor was designated the Fordson ’22’
in 1919. It had twenty-two horsepower and its plow capacity was
rated two, fourteen inch plow bottoms. The motor was a four
cylinder vertical type with four by five inch bore and stroke. It
used a Ford magneto, a Holley carburetor and had splash
lubrication. The transmission was enclosed and all gears ran in an
oil bath. The rear drive wheels were forty-five inches high and
twelve inches wide. The turning radius was twenty-one feet. The
tractor had a sixty-three inch wheel-base, was less than five feet
high and weighed about 2,500 pounds. The machine had a two-piece,
cast-iron frame bolted together at the middle.
On this last point I find some conflict on Ford’s views
toward the frame’s construction. In Farm Implement News, (March
27, 1947), an article claimed Ford had been greatly influenced by
the Wallis Cub, a tractor of the company antecedent to the
Massey-Harris tractor line. The Cub used a locomotive of
automotive-type frame. A single piece, frameless boiler iron
U-structure served as an oil pan inside of which ran clutch,
transmission and final drive — except bull gears. This was the
first commercial use of this design innovation. Reynold M. Wik in
his Agricultural History article, ‘Henry Ford’s Tractor and
American Agriculture,’ (April, 1964), states that Eugene J.
Farkas, a Ford engineer involved with the Fordson, was hard pressed
to dissuade Henry Ford from the idea of a steel frame. Farkas
finally convinced Sorenson that the castings could be designed to
eliminate need for a steel frame for strength. Sorenson evidently
convinced Ford.
The Fordson, which retailed for $750, was a success. With a cost
of production of $567.14 there was a profit of $182.86 on every
tractor, based on 1918 cost accounting. The Fordson’s
popularity grew after the war. For several years before 1928,
Fordson sales in the United States and Canada totaled
three-quarters of all tractors built. Production reached 486,822 in
1925 and by 1927, more than 650,000 had been built at the Brady
Street and Michigan Avenue plant in Dearborn. A total of 739,977
Fordsons were produced from 1917 to 1928 before production was
discontinued in the United States.
The Fordson’s success was the success of the light,
four-wheel tractor idea. When farmers saw the advantages of smaller
kerosene and gasoline tractors they then wanted tractors that would
combine not only belt and drawbar work but be able to cultivate row
crops. In addition to this defect the Fordson had engineering
deficiencies that only time revealed. The small forty-five inch
wheels permitted the tractor to mire down rather easily. The
tractor was so low that there was always the chance of running a
corn stalk through the radiator. Also irksome was the heat of
friction produced by the worm gear differential. The heat radiated
up to make the pressed steel seat feel more like a frying pan.
A fleet of new D8H46A 270 hp. The new 24 volt direct electric
starting. Price for the big 8 Cats are about $560,000. Weight, 40
ton each. These tractors will be used in the copper mines at Twin
Butts, Arizona in strip mining operations and some in old Mexico in
the copper mines.
40-80 Avery tractor, new in 1919 – weight 11 tons.
The worst drawback of the Fordson was its tendency to tip over
backwards, sometimes with fatal results.
Yet, for all these shortcomings, the name of Ford will be
forever associated with the early years of power farming in the
United States, Canada and many European countries. Ford’s mass
production methods made tractor farming accessible and insured Ford
dominance in the light, four-wheel tractor field in the years,
after the Great War.
Students of the history of agricultural tractors will find
interesting and important information on the early years of tractor
farming in the following: Reynold M. Wik, ‘Henry Ford’s
Tractor and American Agriculture,’ Agricultural History,
(April, 1964); R. B. Gray, Development of the Agricultural Tractor
in the United States: Part I, (St. Joseph, Michigan, 1956); Farm
Implement News, (March 27, 1947); Allen Nevins, Ford: Expansion and
Challenge (New York, 1962); Farm Equipment Institute, Land of
Plenty, (Chicago, 1959); and old journals of the American Society
of Agricultural Engineers.
This is a Bosch D U 4 Magneto, which has stamped four places in
the brass casting, ‘Stolen from Lit Bros.’ Can your readers
come up with an explanation for this?
