About this item
After the first tractors appeared on the scene in the late 1890s, it took another two decades and plenty of modifications for farmers to embrace this once-crude technology in favor of the steam engine, further advancing the power-farming revolution. Written by an international expert in agricultural machinery, Farm Tractors takes readers back to the nineteenth century to look at the precursors to modern tractors and travels through the years to follow the machine's evolution as tractors became indispensable equipment on farms across America.INSIDE FARM TRACTORS:* How steam-powered machinery gave way to tractors, and how tractors changed the way that farmers worked* Prominent early manufacturers and models, including Henry Ford's legendary Model F, International Harvester's Farmall, the Waterloo Boy, John Deere, and many more* The use of hydraulics, the advent of diesel engines, the availability of four-wheel drive, and other technical breakthroughs* The introduction of new fuel sources as alternatives to gasoline* Specialized tractors for orchard work, high-acreage operations, carrying loads, cultivating, and other scenarios* The tractor industry's major expansion following World War II* Modern-day tractors and an outlook on the future of farm machinery.
About the Author
No, I'm not the theologian nor the British actor who was married to Judi Dench--both impressive guys, but not me. I'm also not another Michael Williams who wrote several science fiction novels back in the 60s and 70s, I believe, and is about 15 years older than I am. I'm the one who started by working with Margaret Weis's and Tracy Hickman's famous DRAGONLANCE project, with poetry and short stories back in the mid-1980s. I owe them a lot, though the work I'm doing now is quite different than what I was doing then.To make a long story short (which I'm not great at doing, so I became a novelist rather than doing the shorter pieces I started out doing)...When you've written poetry and short fiction, and an editor asks you if you'd "like to try doing a novel," what can you say but "yes", even if you're young and have no idea what you're doing? That's how I began my first novel, WEASEL'S LUCK, way back in the late '80s, and I dove in with the confidence that, unlike a fighter pilot or a neurosurgeon, a novelist can learn by on-the-job training.WEASEL'S LUCK turned out well, after all. It's sold over 700,000 copies world-wide, in a number of languages, and more people like it that hate it, and very few people are indifferent to it, so I think that adds up to a successful first novel. I followed it with several books in the DRAGONLANCE line, with two critically acclaimed novels, ARCADY and ALLAMANDA, and most recently, a big, sprawling magical realist novel called TRAJAN'S ARCH.It's an exciting time now, as TRAJAN'S ARCH is hitting the shelves all over the place, and is available here on Amazon. I hope you'll pick up a copy, and I hope you'll enjoy it. After twenty years of doing this, I think I'm catching on, and I hope my books catch on with you.
