Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING. 289 of his crops with the labour which, he can command at short notice—a fact whereof the importance can hardly be over-estimated. As much work is now done by one man and a machine as formerly by twenty men with- out machines. In some of the latest types of implements it may be said that they are well - nigh independent of human control, doing their work almost as automatically as the most wonderful of the mechanisms to be found in our factories. Their variety is so great that in the following pages we must restrict ourselves to noticing those which are of greatest general interest. To begin at the logical point—namely, the the headland, and shifted from time to time as the work progressed. By means of this secondary tackle the anchor was advanced as required to keep abreast of the engine. The single-engine system is still used, with the improvements evolved by experience, but only to a very small extent as compared with the double-engine system introduced in 1865, whereby the plough or other implement is drawn backwards and forwards by two engines working alternately, the “ idle ” one paying out cable while the other winds it in. The advantages of power over animal cul- tivation are not confined to greater speed of work. Cable-drawn implements are able to breaking-up of the land in readiness for the sowing—we may consider, first of all, the ploughs, cultivators, harrows, and other earth-shifting de- vices moved by the agency of steam. The system of steam tillage originated about half a cen- tury ago, when an English Steam Tillage engineer, John Fowler, intro- duced a steam tackle for oper- ating a plough with three or more shares. The apparatus included, besides a steam-en- gine and the plough, a self- acting wheeled anchor placed on the farther side of the field opposite to the engine. The wire cable used to draw the plough passed round a drum on the engine, thence across the field to the anchor, and round a sheave on the last back of the plough. The anchor sheave could be thrown into gear with a drum, which wound in a rope passed round fowler’s improved compound self-moving ploughing engine, FLYWHEEL SIDE. fowler’s ploughing engine, with vertical winding drum. a pulley fixed at a point on (1,408) 19 VOL. III.