RADIO SIGNALS GUIDE FARMER’S PLOW (Feb, 1932)
Filed under: Ahead of its time — @ 2:28 am
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Feb, 1932
Buy on Ebay
Source: Popular Science ( More articles from this issue )
Issue: Feb, 1932
Buy on Ebay
RADIO SIGNALS GUIDE FARMER’S PLOW
Nearly seven years ago this magazine prophesied that farmers someday would do their plowing by radio. That prediction has now come true, at least on an experimental scale. Recently, J. J. Lynch, of Miles City, Mont., demonstrated his radio-controlled tractor before 200 electrical experts and business men. Steered from a closed car traveling behind, it plowed around a thirty-acre field. Radio relays beneath the empty driver’s seat operated it in response to a radio transmitter in the control car. The experiment brings nearer the dream that “automatic tractors will lumber across the fields and plow with quenchless ardor. The farmer . . . will loll coolly before his radio” (P. S. M., Mar. ‘25, p. 171)
Today we have GPS and laser guided tractors, air conditioned cabs, quality stereo systems, basically all the comforts you could want. Of course there is still the 10 to 12 hours a day on the tractor and the setup and cleanup times before and after that.
Comment by Bob — December 7, 2007 @ 6:06 am
“I love the features, but, well, who are those people back there behind the tractor?”
“Oh them? That’s my network!”
Comment by Neil Russell — December 7, 2007 @ 8:53 am
Why do the artist’s conceptions never look like the actual contraptions?
Comment by Myles — December 10, 2007 @ 11:03 am
Probably because artists aren’t engineers/designers/architects. Fortunately, that doesn’t always apply in reverse, so the stuff we use is actually nice-looking!
Comment by Topher — April 23, 2008 @ 8:15 am