History of Plows Timeline

(c. 4000 BCE–Present)

The history of plows traces the development of agricultural tools from simple wooden implements to advanced, tractor-drawn and precision-guided machines. More Less

Build a timeline like this one in minutes, for free. Start Yours →

Go to: Timeline | Event List | Key Facts | Directory

Origins and ancient plows

Detachable plowshares in the Ancient Near East

1000 BCE

The earliest plows with detachable and replaceable shares date from around 1000 BCE in the Ancient Near East, allowing worn cutting parts to be replaced.

Image source: Plough

Iron plowshares appear in China

500 BCE

The earliest known iron plowshares date from about 500 BCE in China, marking an important development in the durability of plowing equipment.

Ancient Chinese plow efficiency

202 BCE - 220

Chinese plows from the Han period onward achieved efficient designs that generally required only two animals, and later often a single animal, unlike the larger teams commonly used in Europe.

Roman heavy wheeled moldboard plow

250 - 400

The Romans achieved a heavy-wheeled moldboard plow in the late third and fourth centuries AD, with archaeological evidence including finds from Roman Britain.

European iron moldboards remain uncommon

300 - 1000

Although Greek and Roman plows could use moldboards, they often tied them to the shaft with rope, making them more fragile than Chinese designs; iron moldboards did not appear in Europe until the tenth century.

The word plow enters usage

400 - 500

The word is thought to have originally referred to the wheeled heavy plow common in Roman northwestern Europe by the fifth century AD.

Vladimir Orel's proposed plow etymology

2003

Vladimir Orel tentatively connected plough with the Proto-Indo-European stem *blōkó-, associated with Old Armenian peɫem and Welsh bwlch, while noting that the word may not be Indo-European.

Proposed Proto-Indo-European root for plow

2013

In 2013, Guus Kroonen proposed that the word may derive through a vṛddhi formation from *plag/kkōn, meaning sod.

Medieval and Chinese development

Moldboards known in Britain

575 - 650

Moldboards are documented in Britain from the late sixth century onward, showing the presence of moldboard technology in early medieval Europe.

Straight wooden European moldboards

600 - 1700

Before the eighteenth century, European moldboards were usually made of wood and were straight, despite the moldboard plow having appeared in Europe by early medieval or possibly late Roman times.

Carruca heavy plow adoption

750 - 850

The general adoption of the heavy carruca plow in Europe accompanied the spread of the three-field system in the later eighth and early ninth centuries.

Image source: Carruca

Three-field system and plow productivity

750 - 850

The combination of the carruca heavy plow and the three-field system improved agricultural productivity per unit of land in northern Europe.

Image source: Three-field system

Chinese plows reach advanced development

1279

By the end of the Song dynasty in 1279, Chinese plows had reached a level of development that would not be seen in Holland until the seventeenth century.

Chinese plow technology spreads west

1300 - 1700

The advanced heavy iron moldboard tradition that developed in China eventually spread westward to the Netherlands, where it contributed to later agricultural change.

European plow teams before modern design

1500 - 1700

Before the curved moldboard and related eighteenth-century design principles became widespread, European plows commonly required teams of four, six, or eight draft animals, contrasting with the smaller teams used by Chinese plows.

Dutch agricultural plow development

1600 - 1700

Plow development in the Netherlands helped lead into the Agricultural Revolution, whose methods and machinery transformed European farming.

Image source: Neolithic Revolution

Industrial plow innovation

Eighteenth-century moldboard advance

1700 - 1800

The moldboard plow introduced in the eighteenth century represented a major technological advance over earlier straight wooden moldboards.

Rotherham plow developed

1730

In 1730, Joseph Foljambe in Rotherham, England, used new shapes to create the Rotherham plow, whose moldboard was covered with iron.

Robert Ransome begins casting shares

1789

In 1789, Robert Ransome began casting plowshares in a disused malting at St Margaret's Ditches in Ipswich, England.

Image source: Ransomes, Sims & Jefferies

John Lane invents a steel plow

1833

John Lane invented a steel plow in 1833, advancing the use of stronger and more durable materials in plow construction.

John Deere introduces a steel plow

1837

In 1837, John Deere introduced a steel plow that was substantially stronger than iron designs and could work soils in parts of the United States previously considered unsuitable for farming.

Image source: John Deere (inventor)

John Deere experiments with saw blades

1837

Seeking a smoother, more polished plow surface, John Deere experimented with portions of saw blades and was making polished cast-steel plows by 1837.

Mechanization and specialized plows

Ice-export saw plow used in Scandinavia

1800 - 1900

A device that functioned as a saw but was pulled like a plow was used in nineteenth-century Scandinavia to cut blocks of ice for export to Great Britain.

Image source: Ice trade

Steam power applied to plowing

1850

The invention of the mobile steam engine made it possible to apply steam power to plowing from about 1850.

Image source: Traction engine

John Fowler develops the plowing engine

1850 - 1860

John Fowler, an English agricultural engineer and inventor, is credited with inventing the plowing engine and associated balance plow in the mid-nineteenth century.

Image source: John Fowler (agricultural engineer)

Stump-jump plow invented

1876

Australian inventor Richard Bowyer Smith and his brother Clarence Herbert Smith invented the stump-jump plow in 1876.

Image source: Stump-jump plough

Steam plowing expands in Europe

1900 - 1910

At the beginning of the twentieth century, J. Kemna of Eastern Prussia became a leading continental producer of steam-powered plows and challenged the market dominance of English companies.

Internal-combustion tractors supersede earlier plows

1900 - 1920

Steam-powered and other earlier traction systems were eventually superseded by tractors powered by internal-combustion engines in the early twentieth century.

Image source: Tractor