Dallas Center IA 515-720-2463 | At the Iowa State Fair, early 50s. John Deere had a tractor with a loader.
In the bucket were several of the Deere 150 pound wheel weights.
You could drive the thing around and it steered easy. With the tractor stopped, you could turn the front wheels with one finger moving the steering wheel.
Without PS that would be a hard two hand job. Really two arms and assorted other parts of the body helping.
There could have been other companies with it before Deere. Case offered it in the big standard that replaced the model LA.
But I doubt if the Case was before the Deeres, not sure.
And yes there were people who were against power steering. Didn't need it, etc. etc. etc.
Kinda like the anti-auto-steer folks today.
Power steering in cars was becoming popular about the same time.
Could be spelled wrong, the grain bin company - Behlen had a power steering kit for install on older tractors.
Also Char Lynn. Dad put a Char Lynn on the WD-45 that mounted the four row cultivator. It sure was nice.
A wide front end would steer much easier than a narrow front. Often people would chose wide without PS vs narrow with PS. Cost was about the same. By the mid 50s people were wanting wide front ends in a big way.
Our new 1959 Oliver 880 was wide front without power steering. It steered OK.
Pretty sure the Deere Roll-O-Matic on narrow fronts steered better than regular narrow fronts. That may have been some of reasoning
behind Deere's not pushing wide fronts.
Deere and IHC did not push the wide fronts near as much as Allis-Chalmers and Oliver.
Of course the Fords were all wide front then.
Not sure about the old Massey Harris or MM.
There is a J I Case 110 HP steamer at the Mount Pleasant Show. It has power steering. No steering wheel, you move a lever left or right.
It looks to me like full hydraulic power steering would be much easier to build than the ones that still have some steel all the way from the steering wheel to the front wheels.
But in cars you will not see full hydraulic steering for a long time, real long time. They need that ability to still have some control if the PS quits or the engine stops.
Picture is Mr David Morgan checking the hitch pin of the Big Bud 747.
It would be pretty hard to build a bend-in-the-middle without power steering.
Edited by Bobby Greif 12/1/2012 03:15
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First manufacture to introduce Power Steering on tractors.
