Cheap Small Tractors For Sale - Courtesy of Foton Tractors

Tractors have been around in agriculture in one form or another since the industrial revolution, and first appeared in numbers on the farming scene in the United Kingdom during the latter part of the nineteenth century and were in their original guise powered by steam and were stationary.

Two Tractors, one at each end of a field would pull a plough unit back and forth as their position was moved along the headland until the field was completely ploughed or cultivated. Tractors and the term ‘tractor’ were first used about 1901 and replaced the old terminology of ‘traction engine’.

Steam powered Tractors or traction engines as they were first called appeared around about the middle of the 1800 but were far removed from the modern combustion engine leviathans we have grown accustomed to seeing on modern farms and agricultural businesses.

Steam powered tractors and traction engines remained in use in considerable numbers well into the twentieth century until a more reliable combustion engine powered unit was available; however as with all technological advances, even though the first of the oil burning Tractors were invented and marketed in 1897 there was considerable overlap.

It wasn’t until oil powered tractor unit became more efficient and much cheaper than their lumbering steam counterparts that sales of these surpassed steam units and wit it came the demise of the steam engine commonly seen on farms in the period 1850 through to about 1920.

Although many farms continued to run with steam into the 1930s and indeed into the 1940s, it was the advent of two world wars which powered technological advances with engine design, power transmission, rubber tyres and all the associated peripherals of modern internal combustion engine transportation and working vehicles.

The demise of the steam engine tractor in terms of a technology was short lived, less than a century; yet the legacy of those early machines which transformed modern farming from a horse drawn plough of maybe two blades to modern tractor units which enable one man to carry out the same amount of ploughing in a day that it would have taken twenty men with horse drawn ploughs to accomplish.

Now the only place traction engines and steam powered tractors can be seen is in museums, working farm museums and shows held annually across the country.

For more detailed information about modern tractors both large and small, and farming implements at amazing prices go to the Foton Tractors website, the address of which is http://www.FotonTractor.com.au.