IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS FOR TILLING OR CULTIVATING LAND BY STEAM OR OTHER MOTIVE POWER
Year: 1880

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Thomas Robert Hay Fisken at the
Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 30th June 1880.
THOMAS ROBERT HAY FISKEN, of Leeds, in the County of York, Engineer.
"IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS FOR TILLING OR CULTIVATING
LAND BY STEAM OR OTHER MOTIVE POWER."
This Invention relates to improvements in and connected with the construction
and working of machinery or apparatus used in tilling or cultivating land by
steam or other motive power; the object of the improvements being to enable
power to be more efficiently and simply conveyed from the engine or other source
of power to ploughs or other cultivating implements, and to the anchors used in
connection therewith.
In carrying my Invention into effect, I mount fast upon end of a shaft,
supported by a frame mounted upon two or more road or travelling wheels, a
grooved pulley, and upon the other end thereof I mount fast a pinion, which gears
into and gives motion to a spur wheel, which gears into and gives motion in an
opposite direction to another spur wheel. These spur wheels are mounted fast upon
shafts which are supported by the frame, and upon the shafts are mounted loosely
drums which can alternately be clutched to the side of their respective spur wheels.
Upon these drums are coiled steel ropes, the loose ends of which are attached to
an anchor at each end of the field or land to be ploughed or cultivated. Upon the
frame I also mount a balance-plough (or cultivating implement), so that it can be
moved up and down each end alternately into the ground, the frame being, as it
were, the plough-middle, and the whole forming a combined windlass and cultivator.
In order that the plough may be kept into the work I use a toggle joint.
The anchors are also mounted upon road or travelling wheels, the shafts of which
are so arranged that, when at work, they can be drawn to the field side of the anchor,
Bo as to give a better anchorage, and prevent the anchor from being turned over when
the strain of the cultivating implement comes upon it.
Upon motion being given to the said grooved pulley by the endless rope, which
conveys the power from the engine or other source of power, and which rope is
carried by the anchors and rope-porters in the usual way, by what is well known
as the light rope, or "Fisken's system," it is transferred by the pinion on the same
shaft to the said spur wheels, the windlass cultivator being at one end of the field
the steel rope of one of the drums being drawn out and attached to the far anchor

page_text: and the plough being let down, the drum of the extended rope is clutched into its
spur wheel, and receives the motion, and winds up the rope, and pulls the cultivator
towards the far anchor; the other drum laying or uncoiling its rope upon the
ground, so that it is stretched along the field ready to pull the cultivator back to
the end froin which it started. When the cultivator arrives at the far anchor the
drum is unclutched, the end of the plough which was in work is lifted, and the other
end is consequently brought into action, and the other drum is clutched with its
spur wheel, and thus the work proceeds until the field is ploughed or cultivated,
the anchors being moved along the headlands, so as to keep the endless rope in
line with the cultivator.