Centenary of the granting of the Ferguson Master Patent marked

The Patent titled “Apparatus for Coupling Agricultural Implements to Tractors and Automatically Regulating the Depth of Work” or the Ferguson Master Patent as it is more commonly known was first granted to Harry Ferguson on Monday 14th June, 1926. 

To celebrate the centenary author and historian Stevan Patterson from Castlederg unveiled a plaque, launched his latest booklet on the granting of the Patent and wrote a special poem.  Stevan said he considers the granting of the Ferguson Master Patent a very important part in the great legacy of Harry Ferguson.  It was his vision of the modern tractor committed to paper for the first time. 

After his work on building and flying planes in 1913, Harry Ferguson as the son of a farmer would turn his attention to a problem close to his heart, the mechanisation of agriculture.   He began to think about ways to attach the plough to the tractor.  Realising there must be a better way for tractors to not just replace the horse to pull a plough as two separate units, but to work with the forces of nature not against them.  Tractors at that time had to be heavy to provide traction and Harry Ferguson realised that if he could work with natural forces the tractor could be lightweight and actually use the force generated when for example ploughing to transfer weight to the wheels of the tractor.    The Ferguson Belfast plough was introduced in 1917 directly attached to the tractor by a single link as did the Duplex or two point link method that quickly followed in 1919. 

Over the following years he began thinking about not just connecting a plough directly to a tractor but a range of different implements and that is why the Ferguson Master Patent is so important.  The Patent went into great detail all contained in 12 A4 pages of text plus 15 detailed diagrams, and would have taken many months to put to paper in the legal document.  It included revolutionary concepts of a tractor and quickly attached different implements acting as a single unit with automatic depth control, safety and ease of use to raise and lower implements by fingertip control for the first time in history.

Inventions and methods to achieve these ideas by electric, hydraulic, torque reaction and mechanical were demonstrated and explained in the Patent.  Put simply the Ferguson Master Patent was the industrial revolution applied to agriculture it was and indeed still is that important.  No one had thought of these ground-breaking ideas before and that shows the genius of Harry Ferguson as a world changing innovator.

Originally first filed on the 12th February, 1925 the Patent would have its final version deliberately filed by Harry Ferguson on the 11th November, 1925 (Armistice Day).  Harry Ferguson would pick the date in his great belief that the ideas it included would revolutionise agriculture, and by bringing prosperity to farming on a global scale it would help end wars and conflicts.  Such a wonderful motivating factor and ultimate objective for Harry Ferguson, his engineers and main financial backer Thomas MacGregor Greer.

The granting and acceptance under British Patent number 253,566 of the Ferguson Master Patent to Harry Ferguson must have been a very proud time for him and his engineers.

Formally recognising Harry Ferguson as the inventor of a completely new way for the tractor and implements to work together as a mechanised farming solution.  The blue print or birth certificate of the modern tractor if you like could be used to describe it.  The technology it contained and which he and his engineers later perfected as the Ferguson System by 1935 in County Tyrone is now used in every tractor and agricultural implement in the world.

What is not to celebrate about a technology that was developed here in the green fields of Northern Ireland a century ago that has saved countless billions of lives from hunger and poverty. 

Even today the latest computer controlled tractors and implements being designed that are beginning to work autonomously through AI still refer back to the Ferguson Master Patent. 

A century now since the acceptance and granting of the Ferguson Master Patent it is chiefly the reason why Harry Ferguson is celebrated as the man who fed the world and the father of the modern tractor.

Centenary of the granting of the Ferguson Master Patent, modern tractor invented, by Stevan D. T. Patterson, 14th June, 2026.

A Patent granted first on June fourteenth; nineteen twenty-six,

To farm by mechanisation; a solution through nature's own fix.

Harry Ferguson, a farming genius with name to globally recall,

His Ferguson Master Patent; the modern tractor; invented for all.

Tractor and implements a unit; a first as one; prosperity by design,

Implements quick to change; for different tasks; so easy to assign.

Command at finger touch; to raise and lower implements on demand,

And tame the land by automatic depth control; at every farmer's hand.

No longer the outdated horse; but power with safety; boosting produce,

Harry Ferguson took the pain and misery from farming; by ease of use.

World he fed; from tractor seats; profitable farming from slavery; freed,

Planting the seeds in his Master Patent; global change; fulfilling need.

A century now passed, since the Master Patent by granting was sown,

The Ferguson Master Patent; its role in agriculture; importance grown.

From new dawn in farming; now standard in every modern tractor to find,

Fighting hunger and poverty; a revolution in agriculture; for all humankind.

To further celebrate the centenary Stevan will be doing a special presentation in the Strule Arts centre, Omagh on 25th June, at 7.30 PM more details here:  https://www.fermanaghomagh.com/show/from-patent-to-plough-100-years-of-ferguson-innovation/

Stevan Patterson, Castlederg, County Tyrone.