ALANSON HARRIS
Much
like Daniel Massey, Alanson Harris, a farmer and mill owner, had a talent for
designing building, and repairing farm equipment. On the urging of hi family and
neighbors, Harris purchased a small foundry in Brantford, Ontario, in 1857 and
began making and repairing machinery for the local farmers.
MASSEY
HARRIS BINDER (1904)
Soon
Harris was competing for business with the Massey Company. Thus began an intense
rivalry between the two ventures that would last for three decades before the
companies merged in 1891. By this time, the Massey and Harris companies decided
that merging would be better than competing. The result was an agricultural
powerhouse in Canada that few were willing or able to match.
EXPANDING THE BUSINESS
The new Massey Harris Company expanded from harvesting equipment to other areas, including wagons, tillage equipment and manure spreaders.
 MH 20-30 TRACTOR (1929) |
Within
20 years Massey Harris was ready to take their business to the next level: power
farming. They forged agreements with the Bull, Parrett and Wallis tractor
companies. The company’s success accelerated with the introduction of an
advanced U-frame on MH 20-30 tractors of the 1920s and 30s and the
modern-looking M-H 101 introduced in 1938.
HARRY FERGUSON
In the 1920s Harry Ferguson revolutionized tractor design and safety in Great Britain with the perfection of the “Ferguson Sytem” of attaching implements to tractors in a way that controlled implement draft and prevented tractor “flipovers”.
 LITTLE GRAY FERGIE (1950) |
An
agreement with Henry Ford to produce Ford-Ferguson tractors in 1938 made
Ferguson an important figure in international agricultural equipment. Follow the
death of Henry Ford and their agreement, Ferguson produced the popular TO-20,
the “Little Gray Fergie,” in Detroit, MI.
The
Massey Harris company recognized the significance of innovative, patented hitch
and hydraulic system that Ferguson had developed in 1953 negotiated a merger of
the companies as Massey-Harris-Ferguson, Ltd., later shortened to
Massey-Ferguson.
THE FERGUSON SYSTEM
Ferguson’s hydraulic system introduced principles that revolutionized the way tractors use implements. This system’s principles, still used today’s equipment, lets the tractor’s three-point hitching system utilize the weight and pulling forces of the implement to increase the traction of the tractor. It also eliminates the tendency to rear backwards when the implement strikes an obstruction.
FERGUSON
HYDRAULIC SYSTEM