Agricultural Engineering

Testing a beet thinner from 1955. Despite the huge increase in the use of machines in agriculture, manual labour still remained essential for all kinds of work, as can be seen in this picture from 1955. The photo was taken by A. Moens and displays workers thinning beets on the farm of C.J. de Rijke […]

Fordson was a brand name of tractors and trucks manufactured by Henry Ford & Son Inc, and later by Ford Motor Company from 1917 to 1964 in the US and after that in the UK. The tractors were first built in Detroit since 1920. Ford decided to reduce the price of the Fordson after sales

Onze Landbouwwerktuigen; Goes, 1909. The locomobile was a portable steam engine that drove the threshing machine. The locomobile, used here for threshing white mustard crops, is on the right in this photo.

Brinkman & Niemeijer (Zutphen / Dordrecht). Brinkmann & Niemeijer, Landbouwwerktuigen, Motoren; Brinkman & Niemeijer: Zutphen etc., 1920. By the mid-19th century, it was no longer just the local blacksmith who made, modified or sold agricultural tools. The Netherlands now also counted a number of major trading companies that focused on agricultural mechanisation. For example, the

McCormick Harvesting Machine Company (Chicago). Amerikaansche Photographieën; McCormick: Chicago, 1900. The photo is from a photo album that dates to around 1900 and includes images of the company’s production halls and employees at work. It reveals how mass production was possible even with limited resources. This is a photo of the first Reaper, a mechanical

[photos of Lanz Bulldog types]; s.n., n.d. This undated photo book provides an overview of the different vehicles built by Lanz for various agricultural work. The first Lanz Bulldogs were equipped with a hot-bulb engine, a self-igniting combustion engine. It was not dependent on fuels like petroleum and diesel, but could also run on vegetable