Agricultural Tractors - France: Books - History (1/3)

La nouvelle encyclopedie des tracteurs fabriqués en France

This new color edition of the French tractor encyclopedia traces the history of agricultural machines from their origins to the present. The first edition, published in 1998, listed over 200 brands using advertisements and trade magazines, becoming a key reference for enthusiasts.

Interest in vintage machinery has since uncovered many artisanal brands, often unknown and never advertised, preserved by collectors across France. This updated edition adds over fifty new brands and numerous previously unpublished photos, showing the ingenuity of designers from the late 19th century to today.

The book covers major French brands - Renault, Société française, Someca, Vendeuvre - as well as foreign manufacturers producing in France, such as Austin, Massey-Harris, International Harvester, Minneapolis-Moline, Case, Ferguson, or Massey-Ferguson. Lesser-known brands like Patissier Énergic, MAP, Sabatier Le Pratique, Sift, Champion, Labourier, Saint-Chamond, Latil, Babiole, Eco, and Maci are also included.

Finally, the book pays tribute to countless artisans who built tractors, often for a brief period, to meet the needs of an evolving agriculture. This edition provides a complete overview of this unique mechanical heritage for all classic tractor enthusiasts.

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Tracteurs oubliés de nos campagnes 1919-1924

This second volume deals with French tractors and machines of all kinds that followed one another after 1918. In the aftermath of the Great War, in 1919, there was an explosion of models. Manufacturers had indeed gone very far in innovations, sometimes incredible...

The last chapter, devoted to "prototypes, small series and ephemeral tractors" is a perfect illustration of this! Competition between manufacturers was fierce, each had to find its specialty to survive...
Car manufacturers started manufacturing agricultural tractors: Renault, Peugeot, Citroën, Delahaye, De-Dion, D.F.P., Fiat, Austin...

Everyone will find what they are looking for in this reference book, progressing through the pages in the discovery of new models and the men who designed and built these tractors. The evolution of agricultural machinery is underway, the models follow one another.
Illustrated with more than 600 old documents, this work restores the history and atmosphere of the time.
The authors are all three farmers from Seine-et-Marne, motivated by the same passion. They collect old tractors of all kinds, old plows, brochures, etc.

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Tracteurs oubliés de nos campagnes 1896-1918

Relive the history of these old tractors that were first powered by petroleum products and not steam.
Before 1914, these tractors were often called "petrol-powered automobile tractors". First, there were all the derivatives of the various earth-digging machines: the rotary plough, the pickaxe, the motor-plough, the self-propelled plough, the cultivator, etc. Then came other machines powered by cables: the winch tractor, the tractor-tow. Then came the automobile plough, the motor-plough, the automobile hoe, etc. And then the crumbler, the polycultor as well as the tracked tractor, the articulated tractor and the vineyard tractor.

At that time, tractors had as many different shapes and sizes as possible, many were mounted on three wheels. Some tractors looked like real monsters, others were very small. The main bases of mechanics were discovered at the beginning of the 20th century. The First World War having devastated the soils, the re-cultivation of abandoned lands or those located on the sites of combat favored the development of exploitation equipment.

Through a magnificent collection of more than 550 unpublished period photos, discover for the first time these fantastic machines and tractors mounted on iron wheels. Also discover the work of men, the main players in the development of machinery, who are not forgotten in this book either.

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Attelées

How to promote the magnificent French horse-drawn heritage, witness to the needs, tastes and know-how of an era? By revealing its wealth and past prestige!
This beautiful, highly illustrated book is a rich inventory of around thirty families of vehicles and their teams, chosen to be typical of a region and an activity. A real dive into the hard-working France of yesteryear!

Part of the book is devoted to rural vehicles and teams: farm carts, wine carts, farm dumpers, trolleys, triqueballes, hand trucks, logging trucks, flour trucks, livestock trucks, planters, traveling sales cars.

A second part focuses on urban vehicles and teams: trucks, sales cars, removal cars, haquets, brewers', lemonade and wine merchants' cars, ice boxes, milkmen's cars, market gardeners' cars, coal miners' cars, plasterers' cars, construction site vehicles (tar spreaders, rollers, paving and sand dumpers, stone dumpers, etc.), road maintenance and public hygiene (torpedo boats, sweepers, road workers' dumpers, rubbish and bulky waste removal, emptying cars), exceptional convoys.

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L'aube du tracteur en France - catalogue complet de tous les tracteurs agricoles (1917)

In 1917, while the Great War was still devastating our countryside and France was still a country whose rural population used only human labor and animal traction, an extraordinary work appeared: the complete catalog of all agricultural tractors and automotive equipment allowing motorized cultivation: it was a vision of the future made accessible to all.
No fewer than 177 different machines were thus offered to farmers, who, once peace returned, would have to imagine their traditional activity differently.

Today, more than a century after its publication, this work of synthesis has lost none of its documentary interest and has taken on a historical value of its own. The enthusiast of agricultural machinery will discover the incredible diversity of tractors and agricultural machines already available at the time.

The majority of these are machines from across the Atlantic, with famous names (Case, International Harvester, Caterpillar, etc.) or lesser-known ones; British models are also present (Fowler, Aveling & Porter, etc.), while a few names from continental Europe stand out, such as our national Vierzon and the Lanz "across the way". This is truly the Dawn of the tractor in France. Where it all started.

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Les ancêtres de nos tracteurs 1900-1935

An unpublished work! It presents, from very rare documents, 100 brands and 200 models built and sold from 1900 to 1935. Forgotten and incredible machines!
Very few collectors have these period brochures. They bring back to life a period of major technological evolution that profoundly changed the lives of farmers.

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Tracteurs

How can we think of the contemporary agricultural world without imagining a tractor, often brightly colored, boldly crossing a freshly plowed field... An evocation closely linked to our landscapes. Without a doubt, the tractor revolutionized the French rural world at the dawn of the 1950s, pushing the draft horse that then took on the work of the land towards the stable: it was the advent of the power of the mechanical horse.

This arrival quickly turned into a revolution: fewer arms, more worked surfaces, a race for increasing productivity. Initially small in size, imported from across the Atlantic, the machines gained in size and power, spearheading galloping mechanization; our industry then produced them in large numbers.

Those familiar with the rural world see again the Farmall from Mc Cormick-Deering, the "little grey" from Ferguson, the valiant Pony from Massey-Harris and the Renault D22 at work in the French countryside...
At the end of the 1970s, 95% of French farms were equipped with at least one tractor, marking a trend that is still strong today.

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