Food & agriculture · 1837

Steel plough

A polished steel blade sliced prairie sod that clogged cast-iron ploughs.

John Deere, a blacksmith in Grand Detour, Illinois, made his first steel plough from a sawmill blade in 1837. Self-scouring steel ploughs turned the tough grasslands of the American Midwest into farmland.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 2

Coke-fired iron smelting 1709
Heavy mouldboard plough 600

What it led to 1

Gasoline tractor 1892

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Cereal yields in England/UK since 1275 Latest: Wheat: 7.28 t/ha (2024) Source: Our World in Data

US railway network length Latest: 231k km (1993) Source: Our World in Data