This week in 1915: The motor plough

Following a visit to a Cheshire farm, The Engineer reported on one of the first motorised ploughs — a forerunner to the GPS-enabled equipment featured here.

Clearly impressed by what it saw, the magazine reported that the plough, developed by Leeds firm Wyles Motor Ploughs, ‘is a really praiseworthy attempt to provide the farmer with a simple and effective tool capable of doing the work of several horses.’

Describing its operation, The Engineer explained that the plough was ‘propelled by a single cylinder, four-cycle petrol engine of 8.5bhp. This is built up with a two-speed gearbox to form one unit, which is carried upon a channel steel frame.’

As today, agricultural engineers had to find novel solutions to the challenges of operating in a farm environment: ‘In order to enable one wheel to run in the furrow and the other on top of the land when ploughing, each wheel is mounted on a radial arm capable of movement around the pinion, thus giving vertical movement while retaining any correct gear centres,’ the magazine reported.