Electric machines in agriculture : origin,development and applications/ Kevin Desmond.

Kevin Desmond A technology historian and biographer, lives near Bordeaux in southern France. Since 1976, he has published 32 books and 300-plus articles on the men and women innovators, often forgotten, behind the progress of transport and related subjects. This is his sixth book on the history of electric transport – following boats and ships, airplanes, bicycles, trucks, and buses.

Preface 1. Precursors (1783-1914)

2. Towards the All-Electric Farm (1920-2000)

3. The last twenty years (2001-2021)

4. Drone History
5. Drones: Today and Tomorrow

6. Driverless Agricultural Future: the Robotic Farm

As far back as 1873, experiments were carried out to see whether the electric trolley system applied to omnibuses could be adapted to plowing and tilling fields. In 1913, 1,600 “trolley/cable plows were in use across German farmlands. The arrival of the gasoline tractor relegated the use of electricity to electro culture, short-haul farm machinery, and lawnmowers. But it is only with the commercial availability of the lithium-ion battery during the last decade, that electrically powered drones and more recently tractors and earthmovers are being seen as the way ahead. In this, the sixth in his seminal electric transport history series, Kevin Desmond portrays the life and work of the innovative engineers who perfected these e-tractors and agricultural drones.