Posts Tagged ‘plow’
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”*…
The Museum of Failure opens in Helsingborg, Sweden on June 7.
Museum of Failure is a collection of interesting innovation failures. The majority of all innovation projects fail and the museum showcases these failures to provide visitors a fascinating learning experience.
The collection consists of over sixty failed products and services from around the world. Every item provides unique insight into the risky business of innovation…
From the Apple Newton and “Bic for Her” to “Trump, the Game” and Harley Davidson perfume (above)– see them at the Museum of Failure.
* Thomas Edison
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As we try again, we might spare a though for John Deere; he died on this date in 1886. A blacksmith and inventor in Grand Detour, Ill., he frequently repaired the wood and cast-iron plows of eastern U.S. design, which were troubled by the heavy, sticky local soils. By 1838 he had produced three more suitable steel plows of his own new design, and more in following years, which expanded into the agricultural machine business he began upon moving to Moline, Ill. (in 1847). In another ten years, his annual production had increased ten-fold. Originally using imported English steel instead of cast iron, he converted to U.S.-made steel when Pittsburgh steel plants could supply a suitable product. The company diversified with production of harrows, drills, cultivators and wagons… and grew to become the agricultural and construction equipment giant in business to this day.
The Sincerest Form of Flattery, Part Three: Got You Covered…
Readers will recall Europe’s “The Final Countdown” (brilliantly mashed up with “Smells Like Teen Spirit”); now, via Cover Song Archive (“a collection of songs you know, by people you don’t”)…
As we limber our fingers, we might wish an orderly Happy Birthday to agronomy pioneer Jethro Tull; he was born in Basildon in Berkshire on this date in 1674. While probably best remembered for inventing the horse-drawn plow (around 1701), he is arguably more important for his promotion of sowing seeds in rows rather than “broadcast” (simply throwing them around), so that weeds could be controlled by hoeing regularly between the rows. To this end, Tull invented a seed drill, which could plant three rows at a time: a rotary hopper distributed a regulated amount of seed; a blade cut a groove in the ground to receive the seed; then the soil was turned over to cover the sewn seed. Because of its internal moving parts, the seed drill has been called the first “agricultural machine”; in any case, its rotary mechanism became standard for all sowing devices that followed.
source: Royal Berkshire History
The Sound of Silage…
click on the bar above, or here
Can readers identify these “bellowing bedfellows“?
More aural amusement at Sounds Like Science, a project of NYU’s Science, Health, and Environmental Reporting Program. And for more, visit the British Library’s Listen to Nature.
As we rethink our concept of “cute,” we might recall that it was on this date in 1896 that Clement Hardy was issued a U.S. patent for the rotary disk plow (No. 556,972). The plow disks were designed to be drawn into the earth by their own action and by the weight of the soil lifted by the disks and carried on their faces and have a cutting action on the bottom of the furrow instead of scraping– enabling much lighter (and more easily drawn) plows than had previously been necessary to force the disks into the soil and hold them to their work.
a modern version at work (source)
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