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Farm tractor development is a fascinating part of agricultural history. The first tractors to challenge the supremacy of the farm horse and the steam engine were built more than 100 years ago. They were crude and unreliable, but they marked the start of an immense revolution in farming methods and were the forerunners of the modern tractors which are helping to feed a still hungry world.

The development which has led to the modern tractor is a story of ideas and inventiveness. There have been important innovations which were milestones in the history of power farming, and there have been the failures, some of them simply good ideas ahead of their time and others which were mechanically absurd. Classic Farm Tractors describes some of these successes and failures which all played a part in the history of the tractor development.

More than 60 tractors from the past are described here in concise detail, accompanied by a magnificent collection of colour and black and white photographs. Many of the photographs are rare, sourced from archives and private collections. Most of the colour illustrations were taken especially for this book and show tractors selected form collections at the Hunday National Tractor Museum in England and the Manitoba Agricultural Museum in Canada.