THE PLOW IN AMERICA 153 



later a cheaper but rather uncertain process of hard-tempering 

 the outer surface to an equal depth was discovered. Lane's 

 process, which has been generally adopted, has proved worth 

 untold millions to Western farmers in the saving of power, as 

 well as the certainty of being able to plow under what has been 

 regarded as unfavorable conditions. 



What Lane's invention was to the tiller of the prairie, James 

 Oliver's was to the farmer of the "Eastern States. From the 

 time of Ransome and Stevens efforts had been made to harden 

 the wearing parts, but credit for the practical development 

 of the idea is due to Oliver. He began his experiments at 

 South Bend, Ind., in 1853, received a patent on the chilling 

 process in 1868, and so perfected it near the close of 1873 that 

 his name~Ts~~stIII inseparably linked with the chilled plow in 

 all parts of the world. In the making of the chilled castings, 

 iron OF lnw-ofl.rhnn at-fiftl is rnr) info a mqld^jthe front side of 

 wEich is a metal vessel filled with water. This chills the 

 molten nietaT quickly, causing the fibre to run perpendicular 

 to the surface, so that the wearing action on the moldboard is 

 like that across the end of a bundle of sticks. The back of 

 the casting runs on sand, hence coojs more slowly, is lessjiard, 

 and istougher. An annealing and tempering process renders 

 the share and moldboard more resistant to strains. The 

 chilled surface takes a much higher land polish than cast 

 iron, hence will scour in more difficult soils. 



The sulky, or wheel, plow has been developed in the last 

 thirty or forty years, fully half of which was spent in work 

 upon the old style two-wheeled plow. In 1843 T. D Burral, 

 of Geneva, N. Y., first used an inclined wheel to reduce the 

 friction of the landside, placing it between the latter and the 

 moldboard. His plow was not a success, but the idea con- 

 tained the germ of the "staggered" wheel now in common 

 use. 



H. Brown, in 1844, combined several plow bases in a gang 

 supported on wheels. E. Goldthwait, in 1851, patented a 



