Page images
PDF
EPUB
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed][subsumed]

OOD bye to Dobbin, the faithful and sturdy old farm horse. No longer will "the plowman homeward plod his weary way. Instead he will simply turn on the second speed of his agricultural motor-car and go dashing up the lane to the farm house at the rate of twenty miles an hour.

What steam was to the nineteenth century, the little gasoline or alcohol motor promises to be to the twentieth.

Its

The laws of steam are known. Its place is settled. But the internal-comBut the internal-combustion motor is, as yet, an only halftamed monster, the possibilities of which are but guessed at. Daily it is displacing steam and electricity and is fast invading every department of industrial and social life. The ablest engineers of a dozen nations are studying the laws which govern its use and its capabilities are being tested in myriad fields. Even in its present unperfected state, its ability as a power generator is paramount. And it is per horse power the lightest in weight of any of the prime movers. These facts

put the internal-combustion motor in a class by itself.

But twenty years have passed since the first high-speed, internal combustion motor was completed. Yet already it is fast supplanting the horse as a motive power for pleasure and business vehicles, and is being widely adopted in factories and work-shops. And now-the latest and one of the most important of its uses -it is being introduced in eleven countries of the world as a substitute for the farm-horse-pulling the farmer's plows, cutting and garnering his harvests, drawing his produce to market, driving his threshing machines, grinding his grains, cutting his straw and wood, pumping his water and spraying his vineyards. Over a score of agricultural motors, as they are termed, operate in the rich alluvial valley of the Nile in Egypt, doing most of the farm work in districts where the heat prevents the use of horses, and where the scarcity of water is an additional bar to their use. In the cane fields of Cuba, adjacent to Havana, one of these motors has done continual service for upwards of twelve months, cul

tivating the cane, cutting it, drawing it to the mills and conveying the final product to the depots. On the boundless Russian plains, these little giants of the field have for two years been drawing the binders in the wheat harvest. In southern Africa, the green fields around Bloomfontein as well as the diamond valleys of Kimberley already know of the agricultural motor. In distant Australia, for a couple of seasons, it has been used. Tasmania in the southern Pacific has agricultural motors; several cultivate farms in Turkey; a few are found. in the Sandwich Islands; and on the continent of Europe, adorned with her

competitions of the season and carrying off the gold medals from the horse in every contest. A machine made in England has since that time been the leader in the agricultural field, although several competitors have pushed it hard. In the four years since its debut, it has demonstrated its worth in every part of Britain," as well as in the countries enumerated, and in every case it has convinced the most skeptical that it can perform the varied farm work at half the expense of horses, in half the time, requiring but one-third of the men to look after it.

Before considering, in detail, its performance in each of the varieties of farm

[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[graphic][subsumed][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

exert such high pulling power as is needed in plowing, cultivating the soil and cutting and drawing grain to the barns. Herein lies the secret of the gasoline motor, it being possible to construct a vehicle with an eighteen horse-power motor and yet not have the weight in excess of one and one-half tons, whereas a vehicle of the same power using steam, such as a traction engine, weighs four or five times as much. The English machine, weighing 3,000 pounds, proves its further adaptation for agricultural work, by evenly dividing this weight over three wheels which carry it. Of these a small front wheel for steering, with a twentyinch diameter and a flat tire nine inches wide, carrying on its center a semi-cir

cular rubber tire to prevent side slipping, proves a competent guiding member. At the rear of the motor are two large driving wheels, exceptionally large in proportion to the size of the vehicle, and made with a diameter of forty inches and tires nine inches wide, a width sufficient for the softest fields. To increase the traction of these wheels, the tires are fitted with transverse, or angular, strips of wood or metal, which grip the surface of the field or road.

Apart from the wheels, the motor resembles a large, very short wedge laid on its end with the steering wheel at the apex, the driving wheels at the corners and the driver sitting at the rear, with the gasoline and water tanks beside him.

[graphic]

AN AGRICULTURAL MOTOR DRAWING THREE MOWING MACHINES. Traveling six miles an hour, and cutting a swath eighteen feet wide.

[merged small][merged small][graphic]

CUTTING STRAW, USING AGRICULTURAL GASOLINE MOTOR FOR POWER. This power is $1.90 a day cheaper than steam.

speed, at nine hundred revolutions per minute. Each of the cylinders is placed horizontally, and opposed to the other, so that the crankshaft lies transversely of the car and on its ends, outside of the steel covering, carries large sized pulleys which can be used for driving by belt a threshing machine, stone breaker, hay cutter, chopping mill, circular saw, electric dynamo, or any of the many other implements which are actuated by outside power.

Fuel for the motor is either gasoline, paraffin or alcohol, a special carbureter being furnished which performs the difficult task of mixing either of these liquid fuels in the proper proportion with air to produce an explosive mixture. In Eu

In

alcohol and paraffin with gasoline a leader by four per cent, alcohol second and paraffin but two per cent behind alcohol. The matter of cost is largely responsible for the use of alcohol. Europe, denatured alcohol, that is alcohol with all qualities as a beverage or drink destroyed, making its taste absolutely obnoxious, is manufactured free of a revenue tax and on January first, 1907, the revenue tax of two dollars and forty cents per gallon in the United States will be done away with, at once lowering the price of denatured alcohol from two dollars and a half per gallon to a matter of ten or twelve cents. Alcohol for this purpose can be made equally well from corn, potatoes, beets and, in

[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][subsumed]

PLOWING A FURROW, PLANTING POTATOES, AND COVERING THE FURROW. All done at once, traveling at the rate of five miles an hour.

ago, nine and ten cents were common retail figures for gasoline; now the price is twenty and twenty-five, and, whereas the wholesale figure five years ago was as low as six cents, it is now twelve and fifteen.

From the crankshaft of the motor the power is conveyed to the back drive. wheels, through a counter shaft and side chains, a differential permitting one of the drive wheels to turn faster than the other, as may needed in rounding a corner. The transmission allows of one speed ahead and one for backing up or reversing. The steering is done with a handwheel similar to that employed in automobiles, it having chain connections with the upright carrying the front wheel. Viewed exteriorly the agricultural mo

novelty, but a vehicle efficient for every day in the year and capable of withstanding rough usage and continual work.

Plowing proved to be the first and most interesting phase of farm labor to which the agricultural motor was introduced, and at which, four years ago, it made its initial reputation. Naturally this was the best testing ground. Steam engines had proved too heavy for the soft land being plowed, and here the agriculturist expected to mire the internal combustion motor, but he signally failed. For a plowing test among horses, steam. power and the gasoline motor, two and three-quarter acres of very heavy clay soil were selected. It was a condition that the furrows were to be nine inches wide and six inches deep. At the first

« PreviousContinue »