Who invented tracked vehicles

The logs are carried from the back of the procession to the front in an endless chain, like continuous track. Attempts by experimental archaeologists to reconstruct these methods have met with varying success.

The system is a precursor to development of the axle, which keeps a rotating cylinder fixed relative to its cargo. The Mazkum is installed on the Israeli Merkava tank which helps improve mobility and speed, some of the Israeli patents were sold to Caterpillar.

Modern tracks are built from modular chain links which compose together a closed chain. These chain links are often broad and made of manganese alloy steel for high strength, hardness, and abrasion resistance. The links are jointed by a hinge. This allows the track to be flexible and wrap around the set of wheels to make the endless loop. The vehicle's weight is transferred to the bottom length of track by a number of road wheels, or sets of wheels called bogies. Road wheels are typically mounted on some form of suspension to cushion the ride over rough ground.

Suspension design is a major area of development; the very early designs were often completely unsprung. Later-developed road wheel suspension offered only a few inches of travel using springs, whereas modern hydro-pneumatic systems allow several feet of travel and include shock absorbers.

Torsion-bar suspension has become the most common type of military vehicle suspension. Tracks are moved by a toothed drive wheel , or drive sprocket , driven by the motor and engaging with holes in the track links or with pegs on them to drive the track.

The drive wheel is typically mounted well above the contact area on the ground, allowing it to be fixed in position. Placing a suspension on the driving wheel is possible, but is mechanically more complicated. A non-powered wheel, an idler , is placed at the opposite end of the track, primarily to angle the front or rear of the track to allow it to climb over obstacles, and also to tension take up the slack of the track properly - loose track could be easily thrown slipped off the wheels.

Some track arrangements use return rollers to keep the top of the track running straight between the drive sprocket and idler. Others, called slack track , allow the track to droop and run along the tops of large road wheels.

This was a feature of the Christie suspension, leading to occasional misidentification of other slack track-equipped vehicles. Tracks may be broadly categorized as "live" or "dead" track. These dead tracks will lie flat if placed on the ground; the drive sprocket pulls the track around the wheels with no assistance from the track itself.

A length of live track left on the ground will curl upward slightly at each end. Although the drive sprocket must still pull the track around the wheels, the track itself tends to bend inward, slightly assisting the sprocket and conforming to the wheels somewhat. Tracked vehicles have better mobility than pneumatic tires over rough terrain. They smooth out the bumps and glide over small obstacles; riding in a fast tracked vehicle feels like riding in a boat over heavy swells.

Tracks are tougher than tires since they cannot be punctured or torn. Tracks are much less likely to get stuck in soft ground, mud, or snow, since they distribute the weight of the vehicle over a larger contact area, decreasing its ground pressure. Bulldozers , which are most often tracked, use this attribute to rescue other vehicles such as wheeled loaders which have become stuck in or sunk into the ground.

Tracks can also give a higher maneuverability, as a tracked vehicle can turn in its own radius by driving the tracks in opposite directions. In short, whilst the development of the continuous track engaged the attention of a number of inventors in the 18th and 19th centuries, the general use and exploitation of the continuous track belonged to the 20th Century.

A little known American inventor, Henery T. Stith, developed a continuous track prototype which was, in multiple forms, patented in , , and The last was for the application of the track to a prototype off-road bicycle built for his son. He was granted a patent in and built the first steam-powered log hauler at the Waterville Iron Works in Waterville, Maine, the same year.

In all, 83 Lombard steam log haulers are known to have been built up to , when production switched entirely to internal combustion engine powered machines, ending with a Fairbanks diesel powered unit in Undoubtedly, Alvin Lombard was the first commercial manufacturer of the tractor crawler.

At least one of Lombard's steam-powered machines apparently remains in working order. In addition, there may have been up to twice as many Phoenix Centipeed versions of the steam log hauler built under license from Lombard, with vertical instead of horizontal cylinders.

There seems to have been an agreement made after Lombard moved to California, but when previous track patents were studied, discrepancies arose concerning how this matter was resolved. At about the same time a British agricultural company, Hornsby in Grantham, developed a continuous track which was patented in Hornsby's tracked vehicles were given trials as artillery tractors by the British Army on several occasions between and , but not adopted.

The patent was purchased by Holt. The Hornsby tractors featured a track-steer clutch arrangement, which is the basis of the modern crawler operation, and some say an observing British soldier quipped that it crawled like a caterpillar. The word was shrewdly trademarked and defended by Holt. American James B. Hill , working in Bowling Green, Wood County, Ohio, patented what he termed "apron traction" [17] on September 24, Best Tractor Company ; an early successful manufacturer of crawler tractors.

Caterpillar brand continuous tracks have since revolutionized construction vehicles and land warfare. Track systems have been developed and improved during their use on fighting vehicles. During World War I Holt tractors were used by the British and Austro-Hungarian armies to tow heavy artillery and stimulated the development of tanks in several countries. The first tanks to go into action, the Mark I , built by Great Britain, were designed from scratch and were inspired by but not directly based on the Holt.

The slightly later French and German tanks were built on modified Holt running gear. A concept vehicle called the Hyanide proposes a continuous track drive motorcycle. It involves a steerable continuous track to enable the vehicle to corner. This gasoline-powered vehicle consists of two caterpillar tracks steered by activating a dual CVT connected to the rider deck.

As the rider leans the deck side to side, the speed of the tracks change allowing for differential steering. A long line of patents disputes who the "originator" was of continuous tracks. There were a number of designs that attempted to achieve a track laying mechanism, although these designs do not generally resemble modern tracked vehicles. The draft of Blinov 's steam-powered continuous track tractor. In Russian inventor Fyodor Abramovich Blinov created tracked vehicle called "wagon moved on endless rails" caterpillars.

Blinov got a patent for his "wagon" the next year. Later, in he created a steam-powered caterpillar-tractor. This self-propelled crawler was successfully tested and showed at a farmers' exhibition in According to Scientific American , it was Charles Dinsmoor of Warren, Pennsylvania that invented a "vehicle" that was of endless tracks. The article gives a detailed description of the endless tracks and the illustration looks much like today's tracked vehicles.

Alvin O. Lombard of Waterville, Maine was issued a patent in for the Lombard Steam Log Hauler that resembles a regular railroad steam locomotive with sled steerage on front and crawlers in rear for hauling logs in the Northeastern United States and Canada.

Prior to then, horses could be used only until snow depths made hauling impossible. Lombard began commercial production which lasted until around when focus switched entirely to gasoline powered machines. After Lombard began operations, Hornsby in England manufactured at least two full length "track steer" machines, and their patent was later purchased by Holt in , allowing Holt to claim to be the "inventor" of the crawler tractor. In a patent dispute involving rival crawler builder Best, testimony was brought in from people including Lombard, that Holt had inspected a Lombard log hauler shipped out to a western state by people who would later build the Phoenix log hauler in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, under license from Lombard.

This article does not contain any citations or references. Please improve this article by adding a reference. For information about how to add references, see Template:Citation. Linn had experimented with gasoline and steam powered vehicles and six wheel drive before this, and at some point entered Lombard's employment as a demonstrator, mechanic and sales agent.

This resulted in a question of proprietorship of patent rights after a single rear tracked gasoline powered road engine of tricycle arrangement was built to replace the larger motor home in on account of problems with the old picturesque wooden bridges. This dispute resulted in Linn departing Maine and relocating to Morris, New York, to build an improved, contour following flexible lag tread or crawler with independent suspension of halftrack type, gasoline and later diesel powered.

Although several were delivered for military use between and , Linn never received any large military orders. Most of the production between and , approximately units, was sold directly to highway departments and contractors. Steel tracks and payload capacity allowed these machines to work in terrain that would typically cause the poorer quality rubber tires that existed before the mids to spin uselessly, or shred completely.

Linn was a pioneer in snow removal before the practice was embraced in rural areas, with a nine foot steel v-plow and sixteen foot adjustable leveling wings on either side. Once the highway system became paved, snowplowing could be done by four wheel drive trucks equipped by improving tire designs, and the Linn became an off highway vehicle, for logging, mining, dam construction, arctic exploration , etc.

Diagram of tracked suspension. A sprocket wheel on a tank. Modern tracks are built from modular chain links which together compose a closed chain. The links are jointed by a hinge, which allows the track to be flexible and wrap around a set of wheels to make an endless loop. The chain links are often broad, and made of manganese alloy steel for high strength, hardness, and abrasion resistance. Track construction and assembly is dictated by the application. Military vehicles use a track shoe that is integral to the structure of the chain in order to reduce track weight.

Reduced weight allows the vehicle to move faster and decreases overall vehicle weight to ease transportation. Since track weight is completely unsprung , reducing it improves suspension performance at speeds where the track's momentum is significant. In contrast, agricultural and construction vehicles opt for a track with shoes that attach to the chain with bolts and do not form part of the chain's structure.

This allows track shoes to break without compromising the ability of the vehicle to move and decrease productivity but increases the overall weight of the track and vehicle. Extra weight is an advantage when optimizing for traction and power over speed and mobility. The vehicle's weight is transferred to the bottom length of track by a number of road wheels, or sets of wheels called bogies. This website or its third-party tools process personal data e. To learn more, please refer to the cookie policy.

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Thread Tools Show Printable Version. In the interest of starting what I hope will be a lively and good-spirited debate, I ask "Who Invented the "Caterpillar" Track? Asquith, for whom I have nothing but the greatest respect, recently wrote the following regarding a British Hornsby steam-powered "caterpillar" tractor:. John, I'll go for Richard Edgeworth in , although I may be about years out! I don't know what was in Hornsby's patent, but Holt must have thought it worth handing over folding money for!

According to this click on the photo below article, and several others I found, Holt was the inventor of the first "practical" tracks. Lathefan, Good to see that the bait has encouraged you to don your posting gloves. From the photo, evidently Holt was the first to incorporate a vise on a tracked vehicle.

The vice on the Hornsby machine was its lack of suspension. It will be interesting to learn what Holt wanted from the Hornsby patent. Based on what Peter S and I were told, it wasn't the steering mechanism! The Miller steam car, patented in is considered the first tracked vehicle. Was cited in early holt lawsuits as prior art. The lombard log hauler preceded holt in the probably the first comercially sucessful application of tracks. Lombard was the one who files those lawsuits I mention above againt holt and was unsucessful.

These were incredable machines too. The holt was the first crawler tractor aka bull dozer. No controversy here - I think not anyway? Not a first, but an interesting one.

HH Linn worked for Lombard but split over a dispute as to whose ideas were being used ot improve the Lombard tractors.