MI -- Dearborn -- The Henry Ford -- Museum -- Exhibit: Agriculture:
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Description of Pictures: Considered to be the finest American collection of agricultural equipment, our exhibit reflects Henry Ford's passion for acquiring antique farm machinery and showcases antique plows, grain separators, threshers, milking machines, and more. A few popular favorites: an early John Deere plow, the first Fordson tractor, and one of the first gasoline-powered grain combines.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
HFMAG_160803_09.JPG: Moldboard Plows
Plows broke up and turned over the soil to make the ground level and smooth for planting.
HFMAG_160803_14.JPG: Spike-Tooth Harrow
After plowing, farmers used a harrow to further smooth and stir the soil.
HFMAG_160803_18.JPG: Agriculture
Innovations in Farming:
For much of our history, American farmers faced special challenges, including dense forests, hard prairie soil, labor-intensive work, and a shortage of workers.
Farmers, mechanics and industrialists tried to address these challenges with practical solutions. Often, improvements were small. New inventions built on the successes of earlier ones.
But, occasionally, an invention would have far-reaching impact, revolutionizing how the work was done and how much farmers could produce. These were the great innovations that not only changed farm work but transformed our lives.
Explore the many inventions that improved farming and the great innovations that transformed it.
HFMAG_160803_25.JPG: Westinghouse Engine #345
Before tractors, engines fueled by steam often provided the power to run large farm equipment.
At harvest time, a team of horses would have pulled this portable engine from farm to farm to power a crew's threshing machine. When he was only 19, Henry Ford operated this engine for a threshing crew. He later sought out and restored the engine, claiming that running it inspired his confidence in working with machines.
Made about 1881
HFMAG_160803_29.JPG: Henry Ford's Experimental Tractor
The knowledge Ford gained by experimenting with this tractor ultimately led to his creation of the popular Fordson.
Henry Ford's farming roots led to a lifelong desire to make farmers' work easier. This experimental tractor, which Ford called his "automotive plow," used available parts like a 1905 Model B Ford engine, a 1907 Model K Ford radiator, and rear wheels borrowed from a grain binder.
Made about 1907
HFMAG_160803_36.JPG: 1907 Model #1 Fordson Tractor
With the development of the Fordson, the modern tractor as we know it today came into existence.
Henry Ford, long interested in developing a tractor to meet the needs of the small farmer, introduced the Fordson in 1917. This "Model T" of farm power was mass-produced and inexpensive, and it rapidly became the most popular tractor in America. Ford gave this first production model tractor to his friend, botanist Luther Burbank.
HFMAG_160803_41.JPG: 1929 Caterpillar Tractor
This type of tractor was developed for difficult soil conditions where regular wheeled tractors might bog down.
HFMAG_160803_49.JPG: 1978 No-Till Planter
This device eliminated the need for farmers to turn the soil over while preparing to plant, conserving the topsoil.
HFMAG_160803_52.JPG: Corn Planter
Lever action on this corn planter released corn kernels in an evenly spaced grid pattern.
Made about 1875
HFMAG_160803_57.JPG: "Superior" Grain Drill
This machine distributed seeds quickly and evenly, and then covered them over, a vast improvement over spreading the seeds by hand.
Made about 1900
HFMAG_160803_67.JPG: Steam Traction Engine
Before tractors, engines fueled by steam were developed to provide the power to run large farm equipment.
Made about 1916
HFMAG_160803_73.JPG: Portable Combined Thresher-Separator
The thresher-separator efficiently separated the straw from the grain and the chaff, or waste.
Made about 1870
HFMAG_160803_77.JPG: 1914 Tractor
This design was one of many such attempts to reduce the unwieldy size and weight of the early gasoline tractors.
HFMAG_160803_83.JPG: Farmall Tractor
This was the first tractor to successfully navigate between rows of crops.
Made about 1925
HFMAG_160803_90.JPG: 1975 Sperry New Holland Combine
In a single operation, this combine cut down cornstalks, separated and husked the ears, chopped the cornstalks for fodder, and shelled the kernels.
AAA "Gem": AAA considers this location to be a "must see" point of interest. To see pictures of other areas that AAA considers to be Gems, click here.
Wikipedia Description: Henry Ford Museum
Henry Ford Museum began as Henry Ford's personal collection of historic objects, which he began collecting as far back as 1906. Today, the 12 acre (49,000 mē) site is primarily a collection of antique machinery, pop culture items, automobiles, locomotives, aircraft, and other items:
* The museum features a 4K digital projection theater, which shows scientific, natural, or historical documentaries, as well as major feature films.
* A model of the nuclear-powered Ford Nucleon automobile
* An Oscar Mayer Wienermobile
* The 1961 Lincoln Continental, SS-100-X that President John F. Kennedy was riding in when he was assassinated.
* The rocking chair from Ford's Theatre in which President Abraham Lincoln was sitting when he was shot.
* George Washington's camp bed.
* A ten-person safety bicycle made in 1896.
* A collection of several fine 17th- and 18th-century violins including a Stradivarius.
* Thomas Edison's alleged last breath in a sealed tube.
* Buckminster Fuller's prototype Dymaxion house.
* The bus on which Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to give up her seat, leading to the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
* Igor Sikorsky's prototype helicopter.
* Fokker Trimotor airplane that flew the first flight over the North Pole.
* Bill Elliott's record-breaking race car clocking in at over 212 MPH at Talladega in 1987
* Fairbottom Bobs, the Newcomen engine
* A steam engine from Cobb's Engine House in England.
* The Automotive Hall of Fame, adjacent to the Henry Ford Museum.
* A working fragment of the original Holiday Inn "Great Sign"
* A Chesapeake & Ohio Railway 2-6-6-6 "Allegheny"-class steam locomotive built by Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio. The Allegheny was the most powerful steam locomotive ever built.
* Behind the scenes, the Benson Ford Research Center uses the resources of The Henry Ford, especially the photographic, manuscript and archival material which is rarely displayed, to allow visitors to gai ...More...
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[Museums (History)]
2016 photos: Equipment this year: I continued to use my Fuji XS-1 cameras but, depending on the event, I also used a Nikon D7000.
Seven relatively short trips this year:
two Civil War Trust conference (Gettysburg, PA and West Point, NY, with a side-trip to New York City),
my 11th consecutive San Diego Comic-Con trip (including sites in Utah, Nevada, and California),
a quick trip to Michigan for Uncle Wayne's funeral,
two additional trips to New York City, and
a Civil Rights site trip to Alabama during the November elections. Being in places where people died to preserve the rights of minority voters made the Trumputin election even more depressing.
Number of photos taken this year: just over 610,000.
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