Letter: Visit to see Ferguson Belfast Black Prototype tractor was disappointing and underwhelming
A letter from Stevan Patterson:
After going to see the Ferguson Belfast Black Prototype tractor earlier this month, the world’s first Ferguson System tractor and the only tractor Harry Ferguson and his engineers assembled in Northern Ireland, I left feeling so disappointed and saddened.
This was not in the amazing tractor itself, but in how it is currently being poorly displayed.
This little black tractor was assembled at Harry Ferguson’s workshop in the centre of Belfast from 1931-1933 and perfected in the fields of County Tyrone from 1933-1935.
The tractor is based on Harry Ferguson’s invention of the modern tractor in his Ferguson Master Patent of 1925 that incidentally celebrates its centenary this year.
Its construction made ideas in the Ferguson principles a Ferguson System of farm mechanisation and modernisation a practical reality.
For me and those interested in the evolution of the modern tractor thanks to Harry Ferguson and his engineers of William Sands, Archibald Greer and John Chambers it is without doubt the most important tractor in world history and therefore exhibit at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum at Cultra.
Its recent return to Northern Ireland in August last year was somewhat of a coup for Northern Ireland, with many including myself lobbying for its grateful return over a long period.
The tractor - still owned by the Ferguson family - had previously been on display in the British Science Museum in London, testament to its world changing importance, although the tractor had not been on display since 2017.
Yet its importance is largely ignored at Cultra and by National Museums Northern Ireland because of how it is shown to the public presently.
This is especially sad when Northern Ireland is the country which gifted the modern tractor to the world, saving millions of lives from hunger and poverty, thanks to Harry Ferguson.
The Ferguson Belfast Black Prototype tractor being covered in a thick layer of dust, the layout of the display with poor lighting and that it can only be viewed from one side and not the basic requirement of 360 degrees has reinforced the case once again for a dedicated Harry Ferguson Museum of Innovation.
Such a museum will have the space, modern world class state-of-art facilities to better tell the Harry Ferguson story and the stories of all the other great innovators from Northern Ireland.
Stevan Patterson, Castlederg