Description:
Light reflecting off the sharp blades of a plow. In the 1850s, all plows were “walking plows.” Pulled by two horses, the plowman walked behind and guided it through the soil with two handles. Cast iron and steel plows both wore out rapidly. Dirt stuck to the moldboard and made it difficult for horses to pull. This forced the plow from the ground with a jerk, endangering the plowman. The dirt had to be scraped from the moldboard with a paddle every few minutes. In 1857, James Oliver obtained his first patent from the U.S. government, entitled “Improvement in Chilling Plow Shares.” It covered a new way to process a plow point, or share, to an extremely hard surface. This was his first of many improvements in the plow, and the Oliver Plow became the most popular plow in the world. In the late 1880s, Oliver plows were being shipped around the world, including the British Isles, Japan, France, Germany, Mexico, Sweden, Greece and South American countries, prompting a nearly endless line of business visitors to South Bend from around the globe. A new era began in 1905 when a gasoline engine was mounted on a traction truck to pull several plows. Gasoline farm tractors and gang plows (a large plank that carries several plows) developed rapidly, a far cry from the days when a farmer walked behind a team of horses and plow to turn an acre. In 1960 White Motor Corporation of Cleveland, Ohio, a truck manufacturer, acquired Oliver Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary.