Ah, you've moved onto another thread to propagate that theory. Shall I relate the story of how, when challenged about this alleged machine's effectiveness, you told me, "don't argue with me, argue with the agricultural curator at the Smithsonian," whose name you offered. But curiously, when I e-mailed the man, he not only said that it wasn't his area of specialization, but that he believed I was correct on all counts.
The fact is that that steam tractors were hugely expensive and not really well suited to plowing. Usually they were just driven into a field and used to run belt machines like shuckers. The evidence for this is obvious--tractors didn't replace animal power for plowing anywhere in the US until the 1910s, when the internal combustion tractor came along. As for the cotton-picking machine, the evidence is overwhelming that the Rust brothers developed the first practical cotton harvester in the mid 1930s, and cotton farming wasn't mechanized anywhere in the world until the advent of that machinery and modern herbicides (which eliminated hand chopping) after WW2.
i find it FUNNY that you say that the machines weren't well-suited to ploughing, since SOME of the steam traction machines are STILL being used for that precise purpose in GB.
please, oh great oracle, tell us what is so different about ploughing in England & the USA???? does the fact that the Atlantic Ocean is between the 2 nations MAGICALLY make the steam traction machines NON-functional here in the western hemishere????
better yet, head over to DU, where hateFILLED, IGNORANT, biased "information" is appreciated.
free dixie,sw
Shhhh.... Don't confuse the boy with facts. ;-)