I enclose a photo of a tractor/internal combustion traction engine. Apparently it was made in the USA, shipped to Russia and used on the Eastern front then captured by the Germans and, possibly, shipped off for service on the Western front Can any one identify the make?
The tractor is a Hart-Parr 22-45 built between 1903 and 1911 in Charles City, Iowa by the Hart-Parr Company. It ran on kerosene.
This is a little information about Hart-Parr:
Hart-Parr 1897-1929
Hart-Parr was founded in 1901 by Charles Hart and Charles Parr, both engineering students at the University of Wisconsin. Hart and Parr are two of the early pioneers of gasoline tractor design. Hart-Parr was the first American manufacturer to put gasoline tractors into production in 1903, and can make a claim to being the first in the world (the English Ivel firm also began production that year). In 1929, Hart-Parr merged with Oliver Chilled Plow to form the Oliver Company.
Russia purchased quite a few different tractors leading up to WW1 from America, They were trying to improve there agriculture, since they produced very few tractors themselves. I am sure most were pressed into the military, especially hauling artillery.
A few other tractors they tried out were the Case and Rumely; they both resembled the Hart-Parr.
I imagine that the deficiency in tractors was one of the reasons for the Soviet obsession with building tractor factories in the 1920s.
I think Ivel also claim to be the first - a joint gold medal possibly? Ivel certainly has a good claim to have produced the first armoured internal combustion tractor.
