By Edward C. Kendall 



JOHN DEERE'S STEEL PLOW 



[ohn Deere in 1837 invented a plow that could be used 

 successftdly in the sticky, root-filled soil of the pn/irie. 

 It tvas called a steel plow. Actually, it appears that 

 only the cutting edge, the share, on the first Deere plows 

 ivas steel. The moldboard was smoothly ground 

 ivrought iron. 



Deere' s invention succeeded because, as the durable 

 steel share of the plow cut through the heavy earth, the 

 sticky soil could find no place to cling on its polished 

 surfaces. 



AMERICANS MOVING WESTVVAKD in the beginning of 

 L ihc 19th century soon encountered the prairie 

 lands of what we now call the Middle West. The 

 dark fertile soils promised groat rewards to the farm- 

 ers settling in these regions, but also posed certain 

 problems. First was the breaking of the tough 

 prairie sod. The naturalist John Muir descrifjes the 

 conditions facing prairie farmers when he was a boy 

 in the early 1850's as he tells of the use of the big 

 prairie-breaking plows in the following words: ' 



They were used only for the first ploughing, in breaking 

 up the wild sod woven into a lough mass, chiefly by the 

 cord-like roots of perennial grasses, reinforced by the tap 

 roots of oak and hickory bushes, called "grubs," some of 

 which were more than a century old and four or five inches 

 in diameter. ... If in good trim, the plough cut through 

 and turned over these grubs as if the century-old wood were 

 soft like the flesh of carrots and turnips; but if not in good 

 trim the grubs promptly tossed the plough out of the 

 ground. 



The second and greater problem was that the richer 

 lands of the prairie bottoms, after a few years of con- 

 tinuous cultivation, became so sticky that they clogged 

 the moldboards of the plows. Clogging was such a 



factor in ]3rairie plowing that farmers in these regions 

 carried a wooden paddle solely for cleaning off the 

 moldboard, a task which had to be repeated so fre- 

 cjuently that it seriously interfered with plowing 

 efliciency. It seems probable that by the 1830's 

 blacksmiths in the prairie covmtry were beginning to 

 solve the problem of continuous cultivation of sticky 

 I)rairie soil by nailing strips of saw steel to the face of 

 wooden moldboard of the traditional plows. Figure 1 

 is a photograph of an 18th century New England plow 

 in the collection of the U. S. National Museum. This 

 is one type of plow which was brought west by the 

 settlers. It contributed to the development of the 

 prairie breaker shown in iimu-e 2. The first plow on 

 record with strips of steel on the moldboard is attrib- 

 uted to John Lane in Chicago in 1833." Steel 

 presented a smoother surface which shed the sticky 

 loam better than the conventional wooden moldboards 

 covered with wrought iron, or the cast iron mold- 

 boards of the newer factory-made plows then coming 

 into use. 



It is generally accepted as historical fact that John 

 Deere made his first steel plow in 1837 at Grand 

 Detoin-, Illinois. The details of the construction of 



■John Muir (1838-1914), Tlic story nj my boyhood and youth, 

 Boston, 1913, pp. 227, 228. 



- R. L. .-\iclrcy, American agricultural implements, Chicago, 1894 

 p. 14. 



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BULLETIN 218: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEl'M OF HISTORY .\ND TECHNOLOGY 



