Ferguson, Harry George (1884-1960)

Northern Irish engineer who pioneered the development of the plough and low cost tractor, joining forces with Henry Ford in 1938 to manufacture it in the USA. His system of integrated linkages and controls, allowed both the tractor and the implement being pulled to be controlled from the driver's seat. He experimented in automobile and aircraft development and in 1909 accomplished the first recorded flight over Ireland.

Ferguson was born near Belfast. In 1902 he joined his brother in a car- and cycle-repair business. He built his own aeroplane and flew it in 1909, one of the first Britons to do so. He started to import tractors, then, from 1936, designed his own. In 1946, with British government backing, the Ferguson tractor, made by the Standard Motor Company in Coventry, was launched. In the USA Ferguson and Ford fought a massive antitrust suit, largely over a similar machine produced by Ford. Ferguson set up his own US plant in 1948, but sold it to Massey-Harris in 1953.

For the first Ferguson tractor, he designed a plough that would not rear up and crush the driver when encountering an obstacle. But it was his system of draught control, patented in 1925, that revolutionized farming methods by improving the effective traction so that expensive, heavy machines were no longer necessary.