Since ancient times, many people have tried to replace manpower and animal power with mechanical power for farming. But it was not until Europe entered the age of steam engines in the 19th century that the birth of powered agricultural machinery became possible.
The earliest steam-powered tractors were invented in 1856 and 1873 by Alabart in France and R.C. Palvin in Illinois, USA.
In the 1830s, some people began to study the use of steam vehicles to pull agricultural machinery for field operations. But the steam engine traction vehicle (the predecessor of the steam tractor) that could be produced at that time was like a small locomotive. Even if it did not sink in the field, it would compact the soil so hard that it could not be cultivated at all. In 1851, Falas and Smith in England used steam engines to realize farmland mechanical farming for the first time. Some people regard this as the beginning of agricultural mechanization, but their method at that time was to place the steam engine on the head of the field, and use a wire rope to pull the plowshares that were plowing in the field from a distance. Later, with the advancement of steam engine manufacturing technology, a miniaturized steam engine appeared, which was installed on the chassis of the vehicle to drive the wheels, so that it could be driven from the field into the field to directly pull agricultural machinery, and this was the birth of the tractor. Tractors at the time were similar to early steam-engined automobiles, but with more horsepower and slower travel speeds.
The initial tractors were bulky and expensive, inconvenient to use, and often required several people to operate. They were suitable for farming in the vast fields, and ordinary individual farmers could not afford them. Agricultural tractor with internal combustion engine - tractor "Baga". Because the internal combustion engine is relatively light, easy to operate, and has high work efficiency, its appearance has laid the foundation for the popularization and application of tractors. At the beginning of the 20th century, countries such as Sweden, Germany, Hungary and the United Kingdom produced tractors powered by diesel internal combustion engines almost at the same time. During the First World War, due to the war, labor shortages and rising prices of agricultural products promoted the development of farmland tractors. . Between 1910 and 1920 there was a fierce competition between tractors powered by steam engines and internal combustion engines, with the latter showing greater superiority and gradually phasing out the former. Today's tractors use diesel internal combustion engines.
On November 24, 1904, the "77" steam tractor was first tested and later put into mass production. In 1906, the tractor manufacturing company founded by Holt produced the world's first crawler tractor powered by a gasoline internal combustion engine. This tractor began mass production the following year and was the most successful tractor at that time. The prototype car that was referred to when the world's first tank.
In the development of wheeled tractors, people originally widened the steel wheels to increase the ground area and reduce the pressure, but the effect was not good. Later, they came up with a method of adding a layer of rubber protection to the steel wheels. After the birth of automobile tires, people successively used solid and pneumatic tires for tractors. But car tires are not completely suitable for tractors. One is that the grooves of car tires are too shallow. The second is that people find that tractors have better running performance on soft ground when the tires are not sufficiently inflated than when the tires are fully inflated. In 1932, the Phils Down Tire and Rubber Company of the United States produced a large-scale high-pattern low-pressure pneumatic rubber tire. This is the first tire that is truly suitable for agricultural tractors, and it greatly improves the driving and traction performance of wheeled tractors.
By the end of the 1940s, in North America, Western Europe and Australia, tractors had replaced livestock and became the main power of farms. Since then, tractors have been widely used in Eastern Europe, Asia, South America and Africa.