IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR TILLING LAND
Year: 1876

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by John Algernon Clarke at the Office
of the Cominissioners of Patents on the 7th September, 1876.
JOHN ALGERNON CLARKE, of Ladbroke Grove Road, Notting Hill, in the County
of Middlesex, Gentleman. "IMPROVEMENTS IN MACHINERY FOR TILLING LAND."
The object of my Invention is to provide cheaper and more economical machinery
than any yet in use for tilling land by steam power. For this purpose I employ
ploughing or cultivating instruments which are adapted to a suitable framing, and
are actuated by and travel in connection with a locomotive steam engine or other
self-propelling motor.
The construction, arrangement, and mode of applying the working parts are such
as to utilize approximately the maximum possible proportion of the motive power
for actuating the tillage implements and the minimum proportion of power in
merely conveying the motive-power engine
In carying out my Invention a vertical boiler engine or other self-propelling
engine may be used, but I prefer a steam engine of the ordinary road locomotive or
traction engine type, having travelling wheels with broad tyres for supporting the
weight over soft ground. This locomotive engine should be provided with one or
more speeds for slow onward motion, and a quick speed for travelling when the
tilling instruments are not in work and for transporting the apparatus from place
to place
•
My improved tilling machine is so arranged and placed as to plough or cultivate
the land in a transverse direction either behind the main travelling wheels or
following the steering wheels with the engine travelling backwards, but I prefer
to place it on one side of the engine so that the thrust or side draught due to
the passage of the implements through the soil in a direction transveise to the
direction of advance of the engine may not tend to divert the engine out of its
course; by this arrangement also the whole weight of the engine may be available
as a resistance to such thrust or side draught. The direction of the tilling may
be at right angles or in other angular directions from the line of progress of the
engine, and I provide for making this augular position adjustable so that the
engine inay be steered within limits to the right and to the left without altering
the parallelism of the furrows or tracks made by the tilling implements.
The plough bodies, cultivating tines, or other tilling implements, are attached to
heads or frames which traverse along guides in a main frame supported at one

page_text: end by the framing of the engine; the other end of the frame and the frame itself
18 supported at intervals along its whole length upon travelling wheels. This frame
may be made rigid, and the plough bodies or tilling implements made to rise and
fall on their own wheels on the land, but I prefer to have the frame jointed so as
to be flexible vertically, so that the several sections of its length may rise and fall
and conform to the cantour of the ground passed over. The ploughs or other
tilling implements (when in work) may traverse either toward the engine or away
from it, and when returing backwards they will be out of work; they will more-
over return without being turned round end for end, and therefore for the return
they must be shunted, as it were, into a different track or guide which may be
directly over the implements in work, or partly on one side of them; or they may
be made double acting implements, so that on traversing to and fro they will act
in both directions, for which purpose they must be shunted at each end into tracks
of different angles. I drive the heads or moving frames to which the tilling imple-
ments are attached by an endless chain or other ordinary means of effecting a
reciprocating motion through long traverses, and they are raised out of work and
again dropped into work at the ends of their course by inclined guides or curves,
and other appliances adapted for the purpose.
To obviate the difficulty of abrupt penetration I cause the tilling implements to
enter the ground in a gradually deepgning incline and at a delayed speed.
For the purpose of any Invention I adapt either ploughs, ridge ploughs, diggers,
subsoils, cultivators, scarifiers, or other forms of tillage instruments to the same
construction of traversing heads or frames, and I provide for adjusting the angular
position of the implements in relation to the guide frame, according to the width of
work to be executed and the rate of advance of the engine over the land.
Provision is made for raising the guide frame upon its own wheels when turning
at the ends of the field.
The tilling machine can be detached from the engine so as to ride upon its own
wheels when travelling from field to field, or upoù a road, and as it is made in
sections, jointed together, it may be so constructed as to admit of being folded up
for the convenience of transport.
The machine may be fitted with any convenient number of ploughs or other
tilling implements; but to illustrate the advantage of my Invention, I will suppose
the machine to have a set of four single ploughs, two working two furrows, while
the other two when returning are inoperative.
If the pace at which the tilling instruments traverse in the guides be two miles
per hour, and they make furrows about twenty feet long, with the furrows each about
10 inches wide, the rate of advance of the engine in proportion to the speed of
the tilling instruments will be about one-sixth of a mile per hour; hence nearly
the whole of the effective motive power of the engine is applied to the actual
tillage, and the power moreover is applied close to the point where it is generated,
while propelling the engine and apparatus over the land consumes only a fractional
part of the power of the engine, namely, the very small force requisite for moving
the weight of the engine and all the appliances at the very slow pace of about
one-sixth of a mile per hour. This my Invention enables me to use for the purpose
of steam tillage engines of lower power than can be economically employed either
when a traction engine is used in directly bauling the implements, or when the
power is stationed on the headland or any other part of the field.