
Farmers Didn't Invent Tractors. They Were Busy Farming. - neilc
http://ben.casnocha.com/2009/05/farmers-didnt-invent-tractors-they-were-busy-farming.html
======
wglb
Sorry, they do.

A farmer friend of my dad had a large dryland farm, and decided to hook two
tractors together. He removed the front wheels from each, connected the back
tractor to the hitch of the front tractor, linked the throttles together and
had a double-size tractor, with four high-traction wheels. Hydraulics from the
front tractor were used to steer the tractors.

This same fellow built a developing tank for b&w movie film, and did a lot of
time lapse photography. This is on a farm in Montana in the 1960s.

He built a jig to help build these for other farmers who wanted them.

Later, Case and other manufacturers populated the dryland farms with something
that looked very similar.

What many people do not realize is that rural farm america has had a more
thorough impact on daily life by technology than any other segment of life.
From the beginning of my grandfather's generation through the end of my
father's generation saw a nearly two orders of magnitude improvement in
productivity. Every aspect of daily life was affected.

"Busy farming" in our life meant plowing the fields, seeding, harvesting,
which involves machinery, or in my grandfather's generation horses. Everybody
had a shop, which included torches, electric and acetylene, a wide range of
tools. Something breaks, which it often does at the worst possible time, you
generally fix it. Changed plugs in all your vehicles, gapped the plug, points,
changed the oil, put in a new head gasket. During family get-togethers, my Dad
and Uncles would sit around while waiting for dinner figuring out how to make
something work better. Innovation is part of farming.

So the headline is wrong, the article is wrong, and the quote it points to is
wrong. Some of the comments do offer some correction. And apparently there is
a bit of "Blub" phenomenon going on with what does "Busy Farming" mean.

~~~
billjings
That headline didn't pass the smell test for me, so I decided to do some quick
research... who _did_ invent the tractor, anyway?

[http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/220609/John-
Froehl...](http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/220609/John-Froehlich)

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, it was John Froehlich - an Iowa
blacksmith - who invented the first gasoline-powered tractor. Apparently a
Frenchman (nicolas cugnot) had a steam-powered tractor in 1769, but apparently
this was not used for agriculture.

Can't find precisely where he lived, but I imagine that as an Iowan blacksmith
he had some experience with the demands and opportunities in farm work.

~~~
wglb
Any bets that he grew up on a farm?

But the blogger's original point is that people with a different point of view
make inventions outside their own itch. My contention is really the opposite.

~~~
carbon8
A quick google search indicates that he ran a feed mill and took a threshing
crew to ND every year, and the tractor was developed to address problems he
encountered doing that work.

One of a few rough sources:
[http://iagenweb.org/boards/clayton/biographies/index.cgi?rea...](http://iagenweb.org/boards/clayton/biographies/index.cgi?read=118721)

So, yeah, it's actually a perfect example of someone taking his technical
skills and using them to come up with an innovative solution to something
close to home.

------
mwerty
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_Truly_Large_Numbers>

------
kingkawn
Farmers, especially in the era when the tractor would've come about, were
inventing things to use them, not to patent, attract VC investment, conduct
publicity campaigns, and settle into the 4-hour work week.

------
ZeroGravitas
Eric von Hippel's book "Democratizing Innovation" talks about this.

The book is primarily about how end users more than ever are driving
innovation, but he provides plenty of historical evidence of this being
possible for a long time.

There is a chapter that analyses the type of innovation that a user is likely
to make versus the innovations a tool producer is likely to make. A user has
the domain knowledge to realize that e.g. a tool with a particular shape might
be necessary. A tool producer has the knowledge of metallurgy or tool
production to realize that some new alloy might be a better fit for the type
of stresses that this tool requires.

He also notes that not all users will innovate, it will primarily be what he
calls "lead users".

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead_user>

The book is CC licenced and available for free download. It's got far more
insight than this glib blog entry:

<http://web.mit.edu/evhippel/www/democ1.htm>

------
davi
Accepting the premise, I think the most interesting question is: how do non-
farmers learn enough about farmers' problems to solve one?

Generally, how do non-specialists find enough out about a specialized world to
solve a problem from that world? And then, learn enough about the specialist
culture to successfully sell into that culture?

(Not accepting the premise, a few clicks through gives its origin:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#The_Economy_of_Citi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jane_Jacobs#The_Economy_of_Cities))

~~~
cazzy123
Right -- the big question here is, What is the optimal amount of knowledge you
should have about a problem / market? There are diminishing returns at some
point.

~~~
billswift
See "How to Learn About Everything"
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=628413>

And I don't see "diminishing returns" in knowledge as significant. There is
always something else relevant to learn, maybe in another field but still
relevant.

