The world's first caterpillar tractor

All Russian inventors passed through indifference and with difficulty promoted their innovative ideas, which were actively picked up by the West and implemented into its economy. The same story happened with the mechanic-innovator Fyodor Abramovich Blinov, who came out of the people, who developed in 1877 a self-made caterpillar tractor that radically changed the agrarian technology not only in Russia, but all over the world. His invention became the basis of tank building and was widely used in the technical equipment of heavy industry and space technology, landed on the moon.

The first caterpillar tractor was a platform for a locomotive moving on endless track-tracks. Fyodor Abramovich and called it - wagon-caterpillar. Caterpillar belts were made up of small sections and closed, forming a continuous circle. Considering the Russian impassability, this type of transport had advantages over wheeled cars and over trains, as it could move in any direction on any road, as well as over marshy roads.

The state of the road is of no importance to him, because the caterpillar tractor is supported by its entire mass on a wide belt, which reduces the pressure on the ground. This unique invention deserved attention, but government officials ignored the nugget inventor without due attention. Small local merchants tried to attract interest to the invention and even hired to issue a patent for the invention, but it did not go further.

In gratitude for the trouble, the inventor designed one of them a self-propelled tug and a metal agricultural inventory instead of wooden plows and sokh, and the first trailer representing the same tractor is caterpillar, only combined with the others in one chain (like a train). Thus, there was a steam transport having several engines and reaching a power of several tens of horsepower.

True, all these steam engines were not used on their own. They were designed as an auxiliary mechanism for a horse harness. Three years later, F.A. Blinov invents the first oil engine and only now he designs an absolutely self-propelled caterpillar tractor.

The inventor did not have money to develop this complex mechanism, so Blinov himself began to engage in entrepreneurial activity. He designed the pumps to extinguish fires and began to produce them. In wooden Russia, fires happened all the time, so there were many orders for pumps. The funds he invested in his main project - an improved oil caterpillar tractor.

Over time, he equipped him with a cabin for the mechanic, who is also a stoker, a driver, braking and stopping the vehicle. Who showed a genuine interest in his tractors, so these are German entrepreneurs. They constantly asked to sell them a crawler tractor. But he did not, continued to improve the device, came to the invention of an internal combustion engine, which made unnecessary expensive motors R. Diesel.

Later, Blinov opened his own production of caterpillar tractors on oil engines. After his death, the children did not continue his work. But in Western countries began the industrial production of caterpillar tractors.