Yet in the past a lot of tractors were very similar, even though built by hundreds of independent manufactures. Various attempts have been made to redesign the Tractor. But is main purpose remains the same; to transfer tractive effort from an engine into forward pulling motion to move or pull an implement along or through the ground, as was done by horses 100 years ago.
The basic tractor is 4 wheels, the two rear ones being driven and the front two steering. A Engine is mounted in between on a gear box connected to a Rear axle. Over time this set up evolved such that the Front axle mount, Engine, gearbox and axle looked like one unit to the casual observer, with Hydraulic arms mounted on the back. This basic layout has survived for 80+ years as the predominant layout.
Agricultural tractors have evolved to be a multi tasking power source, and implement carrier for a wide range of tasks.
The First real attempt at a Universal tractor was the Agreement by Henry Ford snr and Harry Ferguson to design a new tractor to replace the Horse on farms. The new design was to Incorporate Fergusons 3 Point linkage system which would allow the use of interchangeable implements. This was to eliminate the problem of every tractor having to have its own set of implements.
Early implements were just pulled along and were adapted horse drawn implements. A lot of these needed two men to operate, as one still walked behind like with the horse drawn version, this being very inefficient.
