MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 41 



In connection with this notice of the plows exhibited at the New 

 York Exhibition, it will be profitable to all thinking minds to take a 

 retrospective view of the history of the cast-iron plow, and the slow 

 steps with which improvement has made its advance toward perfection, 

 which certainly does seem as though it had been nearly reached. 



The first patent of which we have any notice, was granted in 1720, 

 to Joseph Foljambe, of Rotherham, England, and for many years 

 afterward, all similar plows bore the name of that place. It was a 

 great improvement upon those previously in use ; the mold-board and 

 land-side were wood, sheathed with iron plates, the share and coulter, 

 wrought iron with steel edges, just such as were in universal use in 

 New England in the forepart of the present century, and similar to 

 those now in use in the South-western States. This plow was in- 

 tended to be worked by one man and two horses much larger than 

 our common horses and turn over an acre to an acre and a quarter 

 a day. Some twenty years after this plow was brought out, the cen- 

 ter draft rod or chain was added, just like that now used, and sup- 

 posed by some to be a' very recent invention. 



The first cast-iron mold-board we find mentioned, was invented by 

 James Small, of Berwickshire, Scotland, about 1740. He continued 

 to manufacture them for fifty years, still using the wrought-iron share ; 

 cast-iron for that purpose having been first applied by Robert Ran- 

 som, of Ipswich, England, in 1785. Eighteen years afterward, he 

 made a valuable improvement, still in use among all good plow-makers, 

 that of chilling the iron in the molds, by using bars of cold iron, upon 

 which the cutting edges of the share are cast, making them harder 

 than steel. 



The inventive ingenuity of England had advanced thus far in 

 eighty years. But the cast-iron plow was not yet complete. A Suffolk 

 farmer added the land-side, making three distinct pieces of casting to 

 each, to which wrought or cast iron beams and handles were afterward 

 added in various parts of England and Scotland. The first cast-iron 

 plow in America was made by Charles Newbold, of Burlington, N. J. 

 His first patent bears date, June 1 7, 1 797, and is for a plow combining 

 mold-board, share, and land-side all in one casting. Objections being 

 made to the cast-iron share, probably because it was not chill-hard- 

 ened, he substituted wrought-iron shares. Great as these improve- 

 ments were upon the old wooden plows, such was the prejudice 

 against them some even affirming that cast-iron poisoned the 

 ground and prevented the growth of crops that after spending, as 

 the inventor alleged, $30,000 in a vain effort to gets his plows into 

 general use, he gave up the business in despair, leaving American 

 farmers wedded to their idols, the old wooden plows. 



In the year 1800, Peter J. Curtemas, a merchant of New York, 

 advertised plows for sale, made of cast iron. In 1807, David Peacock, 

 another Jerseyman, taking his idea from Newbold, for which, however, 

 he paid him a thousand dollars, patented a plow, the mold-board and 

 land-side cast separate, to which he attached a wrought-iron steel- 

 edged share. Thomas Jefferson wrote a treatise in 1798, upon the 



