Saturday, February 23, 2019

Tractor and Pitchfork

Here's a photo from 1918! It's granddad on a tractor. Note the pitchfork leaning against the wheel. 

1 comment:

  1. So that's probably the tractor that ran grandma's washing machine. You can clearly see the power take-off as the big wheel in the middle. It's hooked up to some larger machine than the washer, though.

    A tractor like that likely had maybe 15 - 20 horsepower, barely enough to make the wheels move. But it would provide strong torque so that although it was never fast, it was strong enough to pull ploughs.

    Likely, this model would run on gasoline or maybe kerosene. It would run hot, so there could be the chance that you'd ignite the field you were tending. There's no battery, so you'd start the thing by hand-cranking. If grandpa took good care of it, a child could do the cranking, otherwise there would be much swearing and hand work getting something like that going.

    ReplyDelete