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The First Tractors
The word tractor is taken from Latin, being the agent noun of trahere wich means "to pull"
The first tractors where steam powered and looked more like locomotives.They where large, extremely heavy and difficult to maneuver and they had to be pulled to the working area with horses.
Steam engines were invented in the late 1700's and applied to moving vehicles by the early 1800's.
Kerosene was commonly used as a tractor fuel in the early part of the 20th century.
Henry Ford produced his first experimental gasoline powered tractor in 1907.
Cheaper gasoline after World War II, and the introduction of diesel engines, caused kerosene to disappear as a tractor fuel. In the 1960s, diesel engines where very popular for large farm tractors, and in the 1970s, most farm tractors used diesel as fuel.
In 1904 Benjamin Holt, an american inventor, developed the first caterpillar tracks for tractors. Since the first tractors where very heavey, the caterpillar type track was used to spread the weight of the vehicles over a larger area and prevent it from sinking in the mud. Sinking into the mud was a common problem on farmland in Stockton, California where Holt lived.
When tractors were first introduced, they were fitted with metallic tires. The selling of rubber tiers for tractors started in 1932.
At the beginning of the 1930s tractors were still relatively simple machines actually. As the years went by, tractors went from two cylinder models to four to six cylinders. In 1939, Cleveland Tractor Co. outfitted all of their models with electric starters and lights.
