Tractor story
The first Fordson Tractor
Ford was from an Irish family of farmers. After he became rich producing cars he wanted to make life in the country easier. The story says he assigned this task to two young engineers who presented him with the revolutionary idea of producing tractors from a monoblock (no chassis). Although he hesitated in the beginning he later agreed with the idea, which proved positive later since their tractor was much lighter and automatically stronger. Its advantages were ease of handling and a lower price. Its market price was 395 dollars in 1922.
Thanks to that fact in 1918, at the very beginning, Ford became the greatest American tractor producer with over 30 000 produced units, and by 1928 Ford sold 738 000 tractors, which contributed to the economic pick-up after World War I.
Ford tractors were sold all over the world and with the agreeement signed between Ford and the Soviet union the majority of Ford tractors was planned to be sold on the Soviet market. In the same year a factory was opened in Cork (Ireland). 1932. In 1932 a factory was opened in Dagenham (England) where the company moved its entire production.
The story on the origin of the name Fordson is also very interesting. When it got about that Henry Ford plans to produce tractors, a group of entrepreneurs, hoping to get mileage out of it, had the idea to register a company called „The Ford Tractor Company“. However, Henry came up with a compromise. He included his son into the company's name and called his tractors Ford & son which resulted in the name Fordson. It is also noteworthy that the Ford Tractor Company produced only a few tractors, whereas millions of Fordson tractors were produced.
The enginge of the Model F, the first tractor had four cylinders, three gears and reaching up to 1000 rpm it produced up to 20 HP. It used petroleum as fuel and gas for the ignition process.
In our area this tractor was mainly used to thresh wheat i.e. to run a threshing machine.
Due to the tractor deficit it was a very lucrative profession. During this period, which lasted for 1,5 months, it was active from dusk till dawn. A calculation from 1948, which is also presented in the exhibition shows that in 45 minutes the threshing mashine run with the Fordson’s help managed to thresh 535kg of wheat, which provides a certain picture on how an average family produced between 500 and 1000 kg of wheat. It was used until the appearance of the first kombajn* i.e. the beginning of the 70s.