Mower County transcript. [volume] (Lansing, Minn.) 1868-1915, 1873-07-31
PlOVWinE by Steam.


We And the following description of
new invention OF great interest to
farmers in = letter to the Boston ADJ
vertiser. The experiments were made
on the farm of Mr.. David Landreth,
the we'll known scotsman, near Bristol,
Pa:
Every toil-worn inventor knows how
hard it is to find good chance to try
his machine, especially if a large one,
and one which requires the o.opera-
ton of other men. Mr.. Williamson,
the American patentee of the Thomson
traction engine, learned this to his
cost, and tried long aud fruitlessly to
find place to experiment in steam
blowing, until he met Mr.. Lambeth,
who was not only ready to believe in
and help forward q good invention, but
could open fields for steam culture
that would fully test the power and
value of any machine. It will not
consume space describing the machine
D. D. Williamson, No. 80 Broadway,
New York. The popularity of tho en-.
CINE is that it has q wide band of
India rubber six inches thick for the
tire of the wheels. One engine is
the rubber in q continuous ring; the
other in sections. The rubber is faced
with kind of clean armor, which
keeps it from contact with and wear on
the earth, butthe India rubber spreads
under the weight of the engine, and
tho face or rim of the wheel seems TO
open out like the paw of cat or loot
of an elephant; and although the ma
chine weighs seven tons. its two wheels
do not press sod ground more than an
inch deep, marking its passage over
fallow ground by a path fourteen
inches wide and an iuch and q half
deep. There is q third wheel like a
vslocipede which turns the engine, and
it can turn round and round in it's own
length, making . perfect circle not
more than fifteen feet in diameter. Two
wagons were attached to the engine,
and, loaded with 30 people, started on q
tour round Mr.. Landreth's farm, some.
times on the road. sometimes in fields,
turning the sharpest corners with ease.
We we're shown fields OF ten and twenty
acres plowed with the engine, at a cost
of 81 per acre, and ten acres per day.
After We returned to tho house q gang
p]ow was attached to the engine, and
We started for an old grass field covered
with strong sod. The pillow
had six mold boards, or, as il
we're, six separate plows in one
the machine started at once, and
drew the plows up and down the field,
over some steep grades, turning q fur.
row bed seven feet wide, fourteen inch
burrows, seven inches deep, and moved
as fast as man could walk. It turned
on the headlands in thirty seconds, and
whether going up or down hill it could
be controlled, regulated, slowed, OF
fastened at will. One of these plows,
sold to q Western railroad, was put fol
first trial into . Minnesota prairie
with an extremely hard, rooty sod, and
was driven, as its first test, without
stopping, one mile in a straight line,
curling over unbroken burrows thirty
aud forty feet long,. The burrows, a.
they follow the pillow, break like the
foam-crests of waves on the coast.
Thus you see the point Imade at the
beginning of my story is illustrated al
the end-ten acres can he plowed day
at dollar an acre / have lid NOTHING
of the value of the machine for general
traction. The same engine can haul
q string of wagons to 4 gravel bank,
load them with a steam shovel. take
them out to be dumped, pillow, NOW,
and reap, thrash, drive piles-in short
do all miscellaneous work, and hone
vii! soon be SO improved as to do gen
eral Homework.