135th birthday of William John Sands
Today the 18th of June, 2026 is the 135th anniversary of the birth of William John Sands, Harry Ferguson's chief engineer during the development of the modern tractor.
Of all the engineers that worked for Harry Ferguson in the development of the Ferguson System of farm modernisation, William John Sands was by far the most important and so deserving of better recognition.
William John Sands was born on the 18th June, 1891 at Kilsorrel, Dromore, County Down, Ireland, United Kingdom. He followed his father Samuel into working in the linen industry as a mechanic, before going to work for Harry Ferguson in Belfast as an engineer after Harry Ferguson established his first business during 1911 at May Street Motors in Belfast.
William Sands was a very gifted engineer and designer in his own right and is best remembered for being Harry Ferguson’s chief engineer, tester, researcher and problem solver.
Ferguson came up with visionary ideas and left the detail to people like Sands as his problem solving engineer who had a great ability to think logically, solve problems and engineer practical working solutions. It is clear from Sands own inventions recorded in patents that he was also a great innovator and achiever that was able to think outside the box - developing new ideas and technologies.
Together they saw technology as a way to improve people’s lives and Ireland remaining in the United Kingdom was the best way to achieve that success. They were committed Unionists and both signed the Ulster Covenant on Ulster Day, September 28, 1912 against home rule in Ireland. Ferguson and Sands would be involved in running guns for the UVF, but after the Great War they became committed to bettering lives to end wars and conflicts.
By the time Harry Ferguson got married on the 21st April, 1913 to Maureen Watson from Dromore, County Down, both families disapproved of the marriage by the way, he had decided to move away from the dangers of building and flying planes and file his first Patents on improvements to Carburettors and alongside him was William Sands. 1913 would also see Ferguson and Sands begin work on the first experiments on ploughs. Building on knowledge from local innovators for example William Henderson from Castlederg who was well known as an agricultural innovator and like Harry Ferguson wanted to modernise agriculture.
During the Great War, German U-boats directly targeted ships many loaded with imports of grain in an attempt to starve the people of the British Isles into surrender. By early 1917 this meant only about two additional week’s supply of food remained and this was of a particular concern to Ferguson and Sands.
The Irish Board of Agriculture, as part of UK-wide schemes to address this by growing more food at home, recruited Ferguson and Sands because of their expertise in tractors and ploughs. They started work on the 19th March, 1917 at 5am heading off on a car supplied for them as part of the job which they usually slept in, visiting every single owner of tractor in turn across the country. Showing farmers how to correctly adjust and get the best from their tractors and ploughs, on completion they could justifiably claim that the success the ploughing up campaign in Ireland achieved during 1917 was largely down to them.
The first Ferguson plough directly attached to a tractor called the Belfast Plough following experiments and tests by Ferguson and Sands would go on sale in 1917 the first examples would be hand assembled by Sands. The plough was directly attached by a single link to a tractor drawbar. It was manufactured in the Ferguson workshop at Belfast by Sands and another apprentice patent making engineer, Archibald Greer that Ferguson employed to help Sands build the ploughs. Sands would engineer improvements and make the Ferguson Belfast plough directly fit the new 1917 Fordson tractor that was built by Henry Ford in the USA. The original single point linkage becoming two or Duplex by the end of 1919 with important input from Sands once again.
After a meeting in 1920 between Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson that did not go well and Ford refused to put the plough into production as hoped for by Ferguson Sands went to work on his own.
However Ferguson would realise that he needed Sands and by 1922 when a company in the USA agreed to mass produce the plough, Sands would return to work for Ferguson. It did not take that much to persuade Sands to return as he understood the importance of what was trying to be achieved. Following Sands return, major advances were rapid resulting in the invention of the modern tractor with quickly interchangeable implements in 1925 by Harry Ferguson. There is no doubt that Sands played a crucial role in the ideas it contained and in how they worked. The Ferguson Master Patent would be granted to Harry Ferguson on the 14th June, 1926 and in its granting accepted the many revolutionary ideas it contained.
Converging three point hydraulic linkage would follow, at first two upper links and a lower link was used as Patented in 1928. Due to control issues it was William Sands who made the suggestion in early 1931 of moving the lower middle single link to the top and this established the three point linkage that we know today with a single upper link and two lower links set to converge.
William Sands would play a big part in the design and building of the world’s first Ferguson System tractor the Ferguson Belfast Black prototype tractor built from 1931 – 1933 in Belfast and perfected by autumn 1935 in the quiet fields of County Tyrone at Tullylagan owned by Thomas MacGregor Greer, the man who financed the development of the Ferguson System.
William Sands would be involved in the design and development of the world’s first production Ferguson System tractor the first little Grey Fergie, the Ferguson-Brown Type A introduced in 1936 and the first mass produced Ferguson System tractor the revolutionary Ford-Ferguson introduced in 1939 and manufactured by Henry Ford in the USA for Ferguson. Both of these as Ferguson’s chief engineer. He would also importantly design implements, a key part of the Ferguson System of farm mechanisation as Ferguson System tractors required a range of dedicated implements to take advantage of the system.
While Harry Ferguson was in the USA, William Sands and Archibald Greer in Northern Ireland from the early 1940s would design a number of implements including the Ferguson Belfast potato digger and Ferguson Belfast steerage cultivator that were built at the Ferguson factory in Moira.
The long-time working relationship between William Sands and Harry Ferguson would end after the war when Ferguson tractor production was established in England and Sands did not want to travel anymore preferring to live in Northern Ireland.
Following the commencement of a court case in 1948 by Harry Ferguson against the Ford Motor Company, who continued to build the Ford 8N tractor that was simply a Ford-Ferguson without Ferguson’s permission, the Ford Motor Company persuaded Sands to testify that the majority of the ideas leading to the Ferguson System where his.
But there is no doubt the system was Ferguson’s and as Sands was employed by Ferguson any input in design belonged to the Ferguson Company. Harry Ferguson took what he himself described as a “betrayal” of long-time friend and his past chief engineer very hard. In 1952 Harry Ferguson would win the court case in a consent judgement and the Ford Motor Company agreed to pay him 9.25M Dollars for patent infringements and stop production of the Ford 8N tractor by the end of 1952.
Later in the 1950s it is nice to know that Ferguson and Sands would meet and put their past differences behind them, becoming friends once again. Ferguson even agreed to give Sands a very generous pension as a way of saying thinks. Harry Ferguson knew that he owed William Sands a great deal as he was the engineering talent with technical knowhow that made his genius ideas work.
Harry Ferguson who was not easy to impress, but he lavished praise on Archibald Greer and William Sands saying: “Nor could any words of mine express appreciation of what we owe to Mr William Sands and Mr Archibald Greer. To William Sands in particular, I would pay the highest possible tribute. These men have surely the right to a high place in the future of mechanised farming. To their engineering skill, their patience, and cheery co-operation in all our trials, I pay the highest possible complement.”
William John Sands would pass away in his sleep on the 8th October, 1981 at home in Belfast. He was 90 years old.
William Sands achieved so much in helping to modernise agriculture along with Harry Ferguson and his other Northern Irish engineers, but sadly he like the other engineers in the Ferguson Story are often overlooked.
Today on the 135th anniversary of the birth of William John Sands it’s sad that another year has now passed without him receiving the recognition rightly deserved by having a blue plaque in his honour as Harry Ferguson’s chief engineer and problem solver.
Perhaps this will yet be achieved in the not too distant future as later this year it will be 45 years since his death.
Stevan Patterson, Castlederg, County Tyrone