and his part in the modern day powershift transmission. Ok, I know this has been discussed on here before. But, I got a copy the new book out by Harold L. Brock and Robert N. Pripps. "The Big Book of FORD Tractors" There is a chapter in written by Brock about his career at Ford. This a couple of paragraphs from the book. This Brock writing about the period where Ford was switching to more than one model of tractor. 

"   In addition to Dearborn Motors established a planning group, the management also established a research group to explore new concepts of farm equipment. Ray Miller, Ford's new chief operating officer headed this up. One of the projects purposed was a new design of powershift transmission for the tractor. This project started as result of Howard Simpson approaching me with a new arrangement of planetary gearing that would permit power shifting. Simpson had retired from Ford and spent a major part of his time working on the planetary gear concepts that he patented. I referred him to Ray Miller and his group for consideration of his proposal. This group accepted the idea and designed the Select-O-Speed transmission. They submitted their design and prototype to my product engineering development group for consideration. Tests developed the inadequacy of the transmission to withstand durability requirements. Miller continued to prevail upon the divisional manager Meritt Hill and certain Ford top management that the transmission was ready for production, and that I and my staff were holding up approval of this promising new project. I informed the management that if they wanted to put the transmission into production that they should hire a new chief engineer. They fired me and all of my test engineers that had documented the deficiency of the transmission.

   Having left Ford Motor Company, I was approached by William Hewitt, chairman of the board of Deere & Company. Hewitt had been present at the introduction of the Model 8N tractor at Ford. Hewitt asked if I would consider coming to Deere & Company to help redesign their older two-cylinder tractors. Deere management was concerned that Ford would be coming out with their Select-O-Speed transmission and Deere's new models would not have such a feature. I assured the them that the Ford transmission was doomed to failure and we could design such a unit with durability and characteristics that would enhance Deere's New Generation tractors. When Ford sold the first Select_O_Speed transmissions I had Deere purchase two of them. Under Deere durability tests one lasted 12 hours. and the other 16 hours. Upon calling the Ford tractor engineers, I asked if they had a correction for the transmission problems. I was informed that they did not have the answer at that time. Ford Motor Company stopped production and fired Meritt Hill and Ray Miller."

I just found this to be an interesting first hand account of this bit of farm tractor history.