II56 



FARM ENGINEERING 



FARM ENGINEERING 



AGRICULTURAL 

 MACHINERY 



AND 

 IMPLEMENT? 



896 - Electric Tillage in the Province of Piacenza, Italy. — vnaUa A'^ncoia, 53rd Year. 



No. 3, pp. 120-121. Piactiiza, March 15, 1916. 



In the province of Piacenza, tillage by electricity supplied by cable 

 ha.s been carried on for about 3 years over enormous tracts of land, and the 

 work thus executed in 1915 has proved that the problem of this tillage is on 

 the way to being finally solved. 



The machinery employed for this work by the Erioschi Electrical 

 Undertakings Company yielded satisfactory results everywhere, both in 

 regard to the depth and the regularity of ploughing. 



With 2 plough shares working a strip 26.5 inches wide to a depth of 

 13.8 inches at an average speed of 47.3 inches per second, the machine 

 ploughs 10.76 sq. ft. per second, allowing for stoppages at the headlands, 

 its normal output may amount to 7. 41 acres per day of about 11 hours' 

 work. 



The winch is actuated by an 80 H. P. electric motor, the usual consump- 

 tion being only 60 to 70 H. P. Being fed direct b}'- the feed mains with 

 3600 volts, it can be placed at anj' point of the system. The feed 

 current is transmitted to it by a flexible cable coved with a metal tiibe, which 

 follows the winch in its forward movement. Owing to special terminals the 

 current can be switched on or switched off at any moment when the mains 

 are under load. The staff required does not exceed 3 men : one at the winch 

 one at the plough, and one at the transmission carriage by which the recip- 

 rocating movement of the plough is produced, these three parts of the ma- 

 chine being kept in alignment so as to facilitate supervision and checking 

 of the work. 



897 - Mechanical Tillage Experiments with Tractors at York, England, in 1915. — Gil- 

 christ J., in The University of Leeds and The Yorkshire Council for Agricultural Education, 

 No. 100, Report on Demonstrations with Motor Tractors at York, 1915, 24 pp., 4 tables -|- 8 

 plates. l,eecls, 1916. 

 In agreement with the University of I^eeds and the Yorkshire Agricul- 

 tural Education Committee, the Yorkshire Agricultural Society had demon- 

 strations of tractors and cultivation machines carried out in November 

 1915, near York. The data combined in the appended Table are taken 

 from the detailed Report of these trials. 



