110 New Agricultural Tools
25.1.2: New Agricultural Tools
An important factor of the Agricultural Revolution was the invention of new tools and advancement of old ones, including the plough, seed drill, and threshing machine, to improve the efficiency of agricultural operations.
Learning Objective
Identify some of the new tools developed as part of the Agricultural Revolution
Key Points
- The mechanization and rationalization of agriculture was a key factor of the Agricultural Revolution. New tools were invented and old ones perfected to improve the efficiency of various agricultural operations.
- The Dutch plough was brought to Britain by Dutch contractors. In 1730, Joseph Foljambe in Rotherham, England, used new shapes as the basis for the Rotherham plough, which also covered the moldboard with iron. By 1770, it was the cheapest and best plough available. It spread to Scotland, America, and France. It may have been the first plough to be widely built in factories and the first to be commercially successful.
- In 1789 Robert Ransome started casting ploughshares in a disused malting at St. Margaret’s Ditches. As a result of a mishap in his foundry, a broken mold caused molten metal to come into contact with cold metal, making the metal surface extremely hard — chilled casting — which he advertised as “self sharpening” ploughs and received patents for his discovery.
- James Small further advanced the design. Using mathematical methods, he experimented with various designs until he arrived at a shape cast from a single piece of iron, an improvement on the Scots plough of James Anderson of Hermiston.
- The seed drill was invented in China in the 2nd century BCE and introduced to Italy in the mid-16th century. First attributed to Camillo Torello, it was patented by the Venetian Senate in 1566. In England, it was further refined by Jethro Tull in 1701. Tull’s drill was a mechanical seeder that sowed efficiently at the correct depth and spacing and then covered the seed so that it could grow. However, seed drills of this and successive types were expensive, unreliable, and fragile.
- A threshing machine or thresher is a piece of farm equipment that threshes grain: removes the seeds from the stalks and husks. Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labor. The first threshing machine was invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle, and the subsequent adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples of the mechanization of agriculture.
Key Terms
- plough
- A tool or farm implement for initial cultivation of soil in preparation for sowing seed or planting. It has been a basic instrument for most of recorded history, although written references do not appear in English until c. 1100, after which it is referenced frequently. Its construction was highly advanced during the Agricultural Revolution.
- seed drill
- A device that sows the seeds for crops by metering out individual seeds, positioning