154 POWER AND THE PLOW 



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fore carriage i.e., a two-wheeled frame supporting a plow 

 not unlike the usual walking plow and two years later C. R. 

 Brinckerhoff patented a similar construction. Several patents 

 on gangs, including that of Aaron Smith, preceded the patent 

 issued to M. Furley in 1856 on a sulky plow with one base. 

 Numerous other patents followed rapidly, but the first suc- 

 cessful riding plow was a gang plow patented by F. S. Daven- 

 port February 9, 1864. JDuring the same year Robert Newton, 

 of Jersey ville, 111., converted one of these gangs into a three- 

 horse plow, changing the position of the tongue, adding a 

 three-horse evener and a rolling coulter. His plow had a 

 wide sale in the next few years. 



A single-bottom sulky plow was patented in 1856 by 



M. Furley. Gilpin Moore, in 1875, and W. L. Cassaday, 

 the following year, received patents on sulky plows and 

 continued for many years to make improvements. The 

 latter was the first to remove the landside entirely and use a 

 wheel in its place, the wheel running in the angle of the fur- 

 row at an inclination of nearly forty-five degrees from the per- 

 pendicular. In 1884 G. W. Hunt patented the _ first, pi the 

 three-wheeled riding plows that are now universal. One 

 inclined wheel ahead in the old furrow, and one following in 

 the new, "hug" the furrow wall and hold the plow steady with- 

 out the use of a fixed tongue, thus greatly relieving the strain 

 upon the horses. 



Many other inventors since have contributed improvements 

 in detail, but aside from combining sulky plows into gang 

 plows of two or more bottoms no radical innovations have 

 come about since the work of the men already mentioned. 

 Moore, Oliver, and others adapted the shape of the moldboard 

 to countless soil conditions, until several hundred shapes are 

 now made by each of the largest factories. The unit horse- 

 drawn plow once perfected, the combination into gangs has 

 been a much simpler problem. Invention, largely through 

 Americans, has again reached that stage with regard to the 



