TRACTOR TRIVIA and other interesting stuff 2/9/2024

[953 nut 55,174]

What tractor has the nick name Oil-all-over?

 

 

 

 

 

OLIVER

 

 

My apologies to @oliver2-44   I will make it up to you right now.

 

 

 

The Oliver Farm Equipment Company

 

The Oliver Farm Equipment Company was an American farm equipment manufacturer from the 20th century. It was formed by the April 1, 1929 merger of four companies: American Seeding Machine Company of Richmond, Indiana; Oliver Chilled Plow Works of South Bend, Indiana; Hart-Parr Tractor Company of Charles City, Iowa; and Nichols and Shepard Company of Battle Creek, Michigan.

By 1929, each of these companies had reached a point where continuing operations independently would not be feasible. For most of them, the market had some time earlier reached a saturation point, and in some instances, their machines were dated and rapidly approaching obsolescence. By uniting their various and somewhat diverse product lines into a single company, Oliver Farm Equipment immediately became a full-line manufacturer.

On November 1, 1960, the White Motor Corporation of Cleveland, Ohio, purchased the Oliver Farm Equipment Company. 

 The American Seeding Machine Company was organized in 1903 from a merger of seven different manufacturers of grain drills, corn planters and other "seeding machines." The leading corporate component among the seven merged companies was the Superior Drill Company of Springfield, Ohio. Accordingly, the American Seeding Machine Company established its corporate headquarters at Springfield in the facilities formerly operated by the Superior Drill Company

James Oliver started the Oliver Chilled Plow Works in 1853 In Mishawaka, Indiana where he worked in a foundry. He later bought into an already existing small foundry in South Bend, Ind. Plows with cast iron bottoms and moldboards had been successfully used by farmers and planters in the eastern states of the United States since the time of Thomas Jefferson. However, in the sticky soils of North Dakota and various other portions of the Midwest, the cast iron plows would not "scour"; that is, the sticky soil would cling to the plow, disrupting the flow of soil over the plow's surface, making plowing impossible. Thus, when settlement of North America moved over the Allegheny Mountains into the Midwest, there was a need for a new plow that would be able to scour in the soils of the Midwest. To allow a cast iron bottom to scour in sticky soil, various methods of heat treating for creating a hardened surface on the metal plow bottom had been attempted. All these processes failed because the hard surface created was very thin and would soon wear through to the soft iron under the heat-treated surface. James Oliver developed his sand casting process to include rapid chilling of the molten iron near the outside surface of the casting, which resulted in a bottom that had a thick hardened surface with far greater wearability than competing plow bottoms.

In 1897, Charles Walter Hart and Charles H. Parrnames formed the Hart-Parr Gasoline Engine Company of Madison and in 1903 had successfully invented and built the first commercially successful “tractor” using a 2-cylinder gasoline engine, weighing in at 14,000 pounds.

 

Hart and Parr is credited with having designed and built the first successful gasoline-powered tractor.

In 1848, John Nichols opened a blacksmith shop in Battle Creek, Michigan.  In the blacksmith shop, John Nichols began making various farm tools for local farmers. He built his first thresher/separator in 1852.  The business was successful from the start, so successful that sometime in the 1850s he took on a partner by the name of David Shepard.  Together they formed a partnership known as Nichols, Shepard and Company which manufactured farm machinery, steam engines and mill machinery.  The first thresher/separator of small grains (largely wheat and oats) was developed in about 1831 by the Pitts brothers—Hiram and John Pitts of Buffalo, New York.  However, this early thresher, called the "ground hog," was quite unlike the conventional thresher/separators that developed since that time. For instance, the ground hog's separating unit was largely a slatted apron which pulled the grain across a screen. John Nichols and David Shepard realized that the apron style separator was not a technology that was going to work. Consequently, in 1857, the Nichols and Shepard Company developed the first "vibrator" separating unit for the small grain thresher. This vibrator-style of separator soon became universally adopted by all other thresher/separator manufacturers. The Nichols and Shepard Company received a patent from the United States government for their "Vibrator" grain separator on January 7, 1862. The company also obtained several other patents for advances in the thresher/separator technology and for original improvements in steam engine traction technology. During the 1920s, the Nichols and Shepard Company developed a successfully functioning corn picker. Following the acquisition of the Nichols and Shepard Company by the Oliver company. This corn picker became the direct ancestor of the famous Oliver corn picker.

 

   

Edited February 9 by 953 nut

[oliver2-44 9,726]

No apologies needed @953 nut  My Oliver loader/backhoe is nicknamed “The Beast.  When family members use it, I always remind them:

Fill the hydraulic oil and check the diesel.
 I would say I should change its nickname to”Oil-All-Over” but I actually just ordered 2 new cylinders as part of the 11 that are on it. 
 

Now @Achto might object to Oil-All-Over his shiny family Olive tractor 

 

PS 953 I’m really enjoying your Tractor Trivia series.  

Edited February 9 by oliver2-44

[rmaynard 15,434]

There are always a few really nice Olivers at the Steam-O-Rama show in PA.

My son-in-law's brother in Wisconsin with his "slightly modified" Oliver 88

back in 2020. This tractor was totaled when his storage building burned.

 

[Beap52 809]

James Oliver developed his sand casting process to include rapid chilling of the molten iron near the outside surface of the casting, which resulted in a bottom that had a thick hardened surface with far greater wearability than competing plow bottoms.

 

I am amazed of how folks come up with improvements that result in a better product.  I baffles me how a fellow would think that the " rapid chilling of the molten iron" would result in better plow.  The men of this country were producing steam engines and rapid chilled plows when much of the world was following the north end of a southbound water buffalo.  We are blessed.