The ideas from the dawn of agricultural machinery are truly fascinating

If you look at the content of the video you are about to watch, the ideas behind early tractors are fascinating.

The device in the thumbnail of the video does not have an engine mounted on it.

This is because early steam-powered automobiles (tractors) weighed over 5 tons even for the lightest models, so it is understandable that they could not run on farmland.

How was the steam engine used?

They would level the ground, create a path that wouldn't sink, park the steam-powered vehicle there, and use a pulley to wind a wire or rope, utilizing a winch operation mechanism similar to a windlass or capstan to pull heavy objects.

It is clear that the idea of using a winch to wind things up was important for utilizing steam engines during the early dawn of agricultural mechanization.

You can see the ingenuity used to lighten the devices that perform the work of digging and turning the soil in the fields.

They incorporated a mechanism to transmit external power by installing a capstan in the center of the vehicle, around which a wire or rope is wrapped halfway, allowing the pulley to rotate.

People in the past were smart, weren't they?

Instead of simply pulling the machine from the outside, they created a mechanism that transmits the rotational power of the steam engine to the work vehicle via a rope, acting like a chain by pulling the ropes stretched to the left and right.

Essentially, they are transmitting power through a single rope using devices placed in parallel to perform tasks like winding up or letting down, similar to a winch.

With this, even without a vehicle on both sides, it becomes possible to work with a single vehicle by adjusting the length of the wire, just like a winch.

It is an interesting mechanism because by placing the power source in a location other than the direction of travel, it becomes possible to pull objects with a single rope by pulling from both sides.

The title says something like 'Mole Plow'.

Today's equipment has become so efficient that it has resulted in taking away work from many people.

In countries like Germany, Belgium, and Luxembourg, there are many regions that still preserve the idea of people performing these cumbersome tasks from that era as events like harvest festivals.

Since at least two or more people are required, the number of workers involved in the task increases.

That is the fundamental idea of job creation, isn't it?

By increasing the harvest yield obtained there, even more jobs are created during the harvest season.

Looking at the device in this video, you can understand the background of how U.S. agriculture has efficiently carried out large-scale harvesting operations.

In Japan, too, since the Industrial Revolution, the mechanization of agricultural tools has played a role in streamlining farm work and reducing human burden and strain.

The background to Ford of Ford Motor Company proposing a business focused on tasks for farmers and the transport of goods was hidden by the principles of industrial mechanization and market expansion through credit sales, wasn't it?

By understanding the turning point where business models shifted from royalty and aristocratic society to the masses, it is also an important part of how the fundamental thinking of the economy changed to one created by the masses.

In the UK, due to serious economic and energy problems, the automotive industry utilizing steam engines remained in use until around the 1950s.

This is a device for manufacturing spun yarn that runs on a steam engine.

This is a steam engine for factories from that time, which used a compound engine similar to those in large ships.

You might have surprisingly forgotten, but fossil fuel-based power generation, such as coal and LNG used for general electricity generation, basically all uses steam engines.

External combustion steam engines have excellent thermal efficiency of over 48–52%.

In the case of electricity, about 40% of this energy is lost.

Battery-powered systems, which use 40% more electricity, are even less efficient than gas turbines, which have a thermal efficiency of around 36%. (There is a lot of energy loss.)

The steam-powered car used in the opening video had an even worse thermal efficiency of 5–10%, though.

The reason why the method using a fire-tube boiler has poor thermal efficiency is due to the size of the combustion furnace and how the heat is used.

In a once-through boiler, instead of passing flames through pipes, water is passed through pipes, and by utilizing the phenomenon where water evaporates inside the heated pipes, superheated steam is used by raising the combustion temperature of the gas.

The reason why stationary turbines have good thermal efficiency is that they can be set up in an environment where they can efficiently utilize everything from high-pressure steam to low-pressure exhaust.

Internal combustion engines cannot create this mechanism.

Even if improvements are made, such as using turbines or incorporating air spring structures using air pressure at the bottom of the cylinders, the thermal efficiency of a single heat engine will not exceed 40%.

The biggest disadvantage of gasoline and internal combustion engines is the difficulty of temperature control during lean-burn combustion.

In external combustion engines, technologies such as setting the combustion chamber height high, controlling the heat output according to the height the gas rises, and heating the pipes are employed.

Ingenious methods such as warming water with waste heat to provide preheating are also used.

By setting up conditions where water easily vaporizes, superheated steam is efficiently created, or a supercritical CO₂ state is created, achieving 10 times the thermal efficiency of superheated steam.

Ten times the superheated steam means achieving five times the original thermal efficiency.

By passing through a cycle of heating the inside of a sealed circulation engine, using mechanical motion, and then cooling it through an exhaust process, it becomes possible to perform unique power generation that utilizes the properties of gas that repeatedly expands and contracts.

The inefficiency of external combustion engines is becoming a thing of the past.

Regarding the use of coal, by adding a process of placing coal into a carbonization device (a sealed container) to heat it and extract gas—similar to a coke oven that assumes gasification—the method of directly burning coal can be changed.

By adopting a change in perspective—using a sealed container instead of the foolish structure of obtaining inert gas that was mainstream in the 1930s—the gasification technology used in the coal carbonization process allows solid coal to be utilized as high-temperature gas.

The coke generated during this process can also be used as fuel for heating or as a catalyst for filters to purify highly toxic gases generated from coal.

Furthermore, by gasifying the fuel through water (hot water) and limewater (high temperature), and then heating the gasified fuel using an oil stove to make the combustible gas reach a high-temperature state where it ignites easily, emissions of nitrogen oxides and sulfur oxides—like those from automobiles and diesel engines—can be suppressed, and combustion gas can be recovered as solid carbon using an aqueous sodium hydroxide solution, which can then be used as bath salts for carbonated baths.

Originally, CO2 has a high affinity for water, so it differs from other gases in that it does not dissolve in water.

Even if it is drained as is, it becomes nutrients for shellfish and seaweed, so in reality, by just changing the method of use, CO2 is simply being stored on Earth in a different form.

One can find the differences in how heavy steam engines were used to plow fields in the era shown in the opening video versus how they are utilized today.

I think the trend of lithium-ion batteries will shrink in the future, but nickel-metal hydride batteries and others have high recyclability, and the nickel recovered from the batteries changes its form into things like stainless steel that prevents metal corrosion, and is used as material for spoons, forks, and the like.

The Cedric's steam engine likely had a high possibility of being usable.

Coming up with ways to use things for limited purposes, as in the opening video, proves that humans have the power to turn various ideas into reality.

AI and the like cannot understand such logic that humans can grasp immediately.

They also cannot come up with the idea of laying a pulley on its side to extend or pull it.

By providing winch winding functions alternately, it becomes possible to extend or pull ropes and wires, and convert the rotation mechanism into power.

By incorporating the concept of movement within a certain range and the extended function of creating rotational motion via a pulley, it is possible to create usable applications without installing an engine.

In particular, washing machines from the late 1800s to the early 1900s used external power and adopted a reel crank mechanism to move left and right through rotation, creating unique products that could produce reverse and forward rotation from a single rotation.

By using a shaft with a double-helix groove on the underside of the reel, one can create a ratchet structure that produces forward and reverse rotation from a single direction of rotation once it reaches the opposite side.

By incorporating a counter-rotating mechanism to create a clutch structure, one can create a mechanism where the rotation direction changes when the clutch is pushed at the plus and minus ends on the X-axis.

The structure of contra-rotation itself, made possible by passing another rod through the inside, is simple. Since the gears always rotate in a way that they get caught in each other, the idea of changing rotation with a clutch is to combine two shafts and gears, and by stopping the movement at one end when pressing the clutch at the edge, you can create reverse rotation.

People in the past understood that the idea of giving shape to such concepts would lead to product development, didn't they?

The task of winding and unwinding the rope in the opening video can also be accomplished by using tension and creating it through the rotation of the operating device.

In the opening video, two steam engines are set up at both ends of the field to create movement.

The concept of creating rotational motion via pulleys and the technology of machinery have existed since the era of human manual labor before steam engines, so they have a history of over 2,000 years.

Things that were turned manually came to be operated by piston engines using steam power, leading to where we are today.

Finding ideas to apply to the future from interesting technologies of the past can be a fun thing to do.

Although steam engines as automobiles and trains have fallen out of use, let's understand that modern trains and EVs are also powered by the electricity generated by those steam engines.