County of tractor: Callaway County
Location of tractor: CR-221, Hanson Hills Campground, Callaway County
Tractor built: 1930s
"IH's first effort to solve this problem was a motor cultivator, a class of machine that various companies were building and selling in the late 1910s and early 1920s. As the name implies, these were self-propelled cultivators in the simplest sense—little more than a horse implement with a motor added. The IH motor cultivator and another all-purpose tractor, the Moline Plow Company's Universal, both sold several hundred units in the late 1910s. IH's machine was not particularly successful; the Moline Universal was more successful, but its parent company nevertheless faced dire financial straits. Both models were soon discontinued. Many farmers were content (and could afford) to keep one or two horses or mules around to do miscellaneous light work (such as cultivating).
"A 1930s McCormick-Deering Farmall (F-14) at the Northeast Texas Rural Heritage Center and Museum in August 2015
Around 1920, as IH's motor cultivator died, a team of IH engineers was experimenting with an all-purpose tractor, replacing the horse in every job including cultivating.[5] By 1923, they settled on a configuration, and their informal name for the project, the "Farmall", was selected as the product's official name. As IH management was concerned that the new high-riding, tricycle design—a rather spindly-looking thing to eyes of the early 1920s—might turn off customers, the Farmall was initially released only in Texas, in order to minimize potential embarrassment if the design proved to be unsuccessful.[7] However, the new tractor did its many jobs well and hence sold well, and by 1926, IH was ready for large-scale production at its new Farmall Works plant in Rock Island, Illinois.[2]
Although the Farmall never reached the per-year production numbers of the Fordson during the 1920s, it was the tractor that prevented the Fordson from completely owning the market on small, lightweight, mass-produced, affordable tractors for the small or medium family farm. Its narrow-front tricycle design, high ground clearance to clear crop plants while cultivating (helped by a portal axle [drop gearset]), power take-off (a feature on which IH was an early leader[9]), and standard mounting points for cultivators and other implements on the tractor's frame (a Farmall first[10]) gave it some competitive advantages over the Fordson, especially for row crops, and it became the favorite row-crop tractor of America, outselling all other competitors (such as John Deere's).
"In 1931 came the first variation of the original Farmall. The F-30 was bigger, heavier, and more powerful. The original Farmall became known by the retronym Regular. (It may never have been an official name for branding, but it was common among farmers.) In 1932, IH updated the Farmall Regular with a more powerful engine, and renamed it F-20. At this time, IH also added another model, the F-12, a smaller, lighter version of the original. It had no portal axle at the rear, deriving its ride height instead from larger-diameter wheels. Thus, beginning in 1932, the Farmall brand had grown from a single model to a model line, which became known as the F-series. In 1938, the F-12 was replaced by the F-14, almost identical[11] to the F-12 except for an updated steering column and a higher-revving engine (whose higher rev limit, 1650 rpm instead of 1400, made it more powerful at peak output)." ~ Wikipedia