Ferguson Company
Encyclopedia
David Brown (entrepreneur)
Sir David Brown was an English entrepreneur, managing director of his family firm David Brown Limited and one time owner of shipbuilders Vosper Thornycroft and automobile manufacturer Aston Martin....
, Harry Ferguson
Harry Ferguson
Henry George "Harry" Ferguson was an Irish engineer and inventor who is noted for his role in the development of the modern agricultural tractor, for becoming the first Irishman to build and fly his own aeroplane, and for developing the first four-wheel drive Formula One car, the Ferguson P99...
formed the Ferguson-Brown Company and the two men produced the Model A Ferguson-Brown tractor
Tractor
A tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...
with a Ferguson-designed hydraulic hitch. Ferguson surmised that the tractor hitch was the key to having a better plough and designed a simpler tractor attachment for it.
In 1938 Ferguson made a handshake agreement with Henry Ford
Henry Ford
Henry Ford was an American industrialist, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, and sponsor of the development of the assembly line technique of mass production. His introduction of the Model T automobile revolutionized transportation and American industry...
to produce Ferguson System Ford-Ferguson tractors using Ferguson's own self-regulating three-point hitch system, beginning with the Ford-Ferguson 9N tractor. This tractor is recognizable by the blue Ford emblem on the front of the hood and the Ferguson System emblem on the grill. The three-point hitch soon became the favorite hitch attachment system among farmers in North America and around the world. This tractor model also included a rear Power Take Off (PTO) shaft that could be used to power three point hitch mounted implements such as sickle-bar mowers. This PTO location set the standard for future tractor developments.
In December 1945 Standard Motor Company Limited announced that an arrangement had been made to manufacture Mr Harry Ferguson's world-famous tractors and Standard's newly acquired factory at Banner Lane Coventry would be used for the project. These tractors would be for the Eastern hemisphere, Ferguson tractors built by Ford in America for the Western hemisphere. Production was expected to start in 1946. Implements would be sourced separately by Ferguson who would also merchandise the tractors and the implements.
In 1946 the Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company
Ford Motor Company is an American multinational automaker based in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. The automaker was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. In addition to the Ford and Lincoln brands, Ford also owns a small stake in Mazda in Japan and Aston Martin in the UK...
parted from Ferguson and a protracted lawsuit followed, involving Ford's continued use of Ferguson's patent
Patent
A patent is a form of intellectual property. It consists of a set of exclusive rights granted by a sovereign state to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for the public disclosure of an invention....
s. Ford altered the hydraulic design of its postwar tractors to avoid Ferguson's hydraulic system patent, but continued to produce machines equipped with the basic Ferguson hitch arrangement. Equipped with the three-point hitch, the postwar Ford 8N
Ford N Series Tractors
The Ford N-Series tractor was a range of farm tractors produced by Ford between 1939 and 1954 spanning the 9N, 2N, 8N and NAA models....
became the top-selling individual tractor of all time in North America.
After the split with Ford, Ferguson took the opportunity to have the Standard Motor Company
Standard Motor Company
The Standard Motor Company was founded in Coventry, England in 1903 by Reginald Walter Maudslay . The Standard name was last used in Britain in 1963, and in India in 1987.-1903–1914:...
of the UK
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
produce a new design, the Model TE20
Ferguson TE20
The Ferguson Model TE20 was a British agricultural tractor. It was Harry Ferguson's most successful design, commonly known as the Little Grey Fergie. It was manufactured from 1946 to 1956...
. The model name came from Tractor, England 20 hp but is affectionately known as the Little Grey Fergie. There were several variants of the TE20; the first tractors were designed to run on petrol, and were known as the TEA20 following the introduction of the TED20 which ran on TVO (tractor vapourising oil
Tractor vaporising oil
Tractor vaporising oil is a fuel for internal combustion engines, produced from paraffin . In the United Kingdom and Australia, after the Second World War, it was commonly used for tractors until diesel engines became commonplace...
, similar to paraffin
Paraffin
In chemistry, paraffin is a term that can be used synonymously with "alkane", indicating hydrocarbons with the general formula CnH2n+2. Paraffin wax refers to a mixture of alkanes that falls within the 20 ≤ n ≤ 40 range; they are found in the solid state at room temperature and begin to enter the...
). Later a diesel
Diesel engine
A diesel engine is an internal combustion engine that uses the heat of compression to initiate ignition to burn the fuel, which is injected into the combustion chamber...
model was introduced, the TEF20. There were other variants with narrow wheelbase
Wheelbase
In both road and rail vehicles, the wheelbase is the distance between the centers of the front and rear wheels.- Road :In automobiles, the wheelbase is the horizontal distance between the center of the front wheel and the center of the rear wheel...
s for working in vineyard
Vineyard
A vineyard is a plantation of grape-bearing vines, grown mainly for winemaking, but also raisins, table grapes and non-alcoholic grape juice...
s and orchard
Orchard
An orchard is an intentional planting of trees or shrubs that is maintained for food production. Orchards comprise fruit or nut-producing trees which are grown for commercial production. Orchards are also sometimes a feature of large gardens, where they serve an aesthetic as well as a productive...
s, like the TEB20 and TEC20.
In all over 500,000 Little Grey Fergies were built between 1946 and 1956, and a surprising number survive today. So successful was the TE20 that Ford nicknamed it the "Grey Menace" as sales of the tractor spread across the world. They were even used on an expedition to the South Pole in 1958 by Sir Edmund Hillary
Edmund Hillary
Sir Edmund Percival Hillary, KG, ONZ, KBE , was a New Zealand mountaineer, explorer and philanthropist. On 29 May 1953 at the age of 33, he and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay became the first climbers known to have reached the summit of Mount Everest – see Timeline of climbing Mount Everest...
, a testament to the durability of the machine. Ford ultimately settled the legal proceedings with a multi-million dollar sum that allowed Ferguson to further expand his own manufacturing interests.
There is a monument in Wentworth
Wentworth, New South Wales
Wentworth is a small border town in the far south west of the state of New South Wales, Australia. It lies at the confluence of Australia's two most important rivers, the Darling and the Murray, the latter forming the border with the state of Victoria to the south. The border with the state of...
on the junction of the Darling
Darling River
The Darling River is the third longest river in Australia, measuring from its source in northern New South Wales to its confluence with the Murray River at Wentworth, New South Wales. Including its longest contiguous tributaries it is long, making it the longest river system in Australia.The...
and Murray River
Murray River
The Murray River is Australia's longest river. At in length, the Murray rises in the Australian Alps, draining the western side of Australia's highest mountains and, for most of its length, meanders across Australia's inland plains, forming the border between New South Wales and Victoria as it...
s in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
commemorating the time in 1956 when both rivers flooded and a fleet of little grey Fergies was used to build levee bank
Levee
A levee, levée, dike , embankment, floodbank or stopbank is an elongated naturally occurring ridge or artificially constructed fill or wall, which regulates water levels...
s to save the town.
The principal feature of the Ferguson System was the three-point linkage
Three-point hitch
The three-point hitch most often refers to the way ploughs and other implements are attached to an agricultural tractor. The three points resemble either a triangle, or the letter A...
. This allowed trailed implements to be supported on a hydraulic system with the two drag links attached under the rear axle and a single compression link, connected to the upper rear transmission
Transmission (mechanics)
A machine consists of a power source and a power transmission system, which provides controlled application of the power. Merriam-Webster defines transmission as: an assembly of parts including the speed-changing gears and the propeller shaft by which the power is transmitted from an engine to a...
case, that was automatically regulating the hydraulic suspension's height. Thus the implement could be built at a minimum weight because it needed no attached wheels, manual controls and so on. It was also assisting the tractor to maintain traction because it was applying a combined drag and rotary force to the axle that kept the driving wheels, on that axle, on the ground and the steering wheels held onto the ground too. Consequently the "rearing and bucking" of overloaded tractors was overcome, making tractors much safer.
Ferguson designs for tractors were the first with single-wheel brakes that allowed the driver to turn sharply by braking the inside wheel. The TE20 was one of the first tractors to have a four-speed gearbox with integrated Differential and hydraulic system.
In 1953 Ferguson and Massey-Harris merged and the combined company Massey-Harris-Ferguson (later shortened to Massey Ferguson) became the manufacturer of the tractors and other designs. By then many manufacturers had developed their own three-point linkages and the linkage had become standardised worldwide.