Continuous track
Modern continuous tracks can be made with soft belts of synthetic rubber, reinforced with steel wires, in the case of lighter agricultural machinery.
The stiff mechanism was first given a physical form by Hornsby & Sons in 1904 and then made popular by Caterpillar Tractor Company, with tanks emerging during World War I.
for Tiverton, the Heathcote steam plough was demonstrated in 1837 and press coverage fortunately provided a woodcut of the unusual tracked vehicle.
The chassis was supported on "numerous small wheels or rollers" which ran upon the lower iron bands, which "thus form a perfectly portable and smooth road for the platform".
[7] A number of horse-drawn wagons, carts and gun carriages were successfully deployed in the Crimean War, waged between October 1853 and February 1856, the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich manufacturing dreadnaught wheels.
A detailed report of the tests on steam traction, carried out by a select Committee of the Board of Ordnance, was published in June 1856,[10] by which date the Crimean War was over, consequently the mortar and its transportation became irrelevant.
Further to Fowler's patent of 1858, in 1877, a Russian, Fyodor Blinov, created a tracked vehicle called "wagon moved on endless rails".
A little-known American inventor, Henry Thomas Stith (1839–1916), had developed a continuous track prototype which was, in multiple forms, patented in 1873, 1880, and 1900.
Frank Beamond (1870–1941), a less-commonly known but significant British inventor, designed and built caterpillar tracks, and was granted patents for them in a number of countries, in 1900 and 1907.
In all, 83 Lombard steam log haulers are known to have been built up to 1917, when production switched entirely to internal combustion engine powered machines, ending with a Fairbanks diesel-powered unit in 1934.
In addition, there may have been up to twice as many Phoenix Centipede versions of the steam log hauler built under license from Lombard, with vertical instead of horizontal cylinders.
[25] The design differed from modern tracks in that it flexed in only one direction, with the effect that the links locked together to form a solid rail on which the road wheels ran.
In a memorandum of 1908, Antarctic explorer Robert Falcon Scott presented his view that man-hauling to the South Pole was impossible and that motor traction was needed.
[35] 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.
[36][37][38] In 1877 Russian inventor Fyodor Abramovich Blinov created a horse-drawn tracked vehicle called "wagon moved on endless rails",[18] which received a patent the next year.
[citation needed] The Phoenix Centipeed typically had a fancier wood cab, steering wheel tipped forward at a 45 degree angle and vertical instead of horizontal cylinders.
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 1909 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.
Steel tracks and payload capacity allowed these machines to work in terrain that would typically cause the poorer quality rubber tyres that existed before the mid-1930s to spin uselessly, or shred completely.
[citation needed] 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.
The chain links are often broad, and can be made of manganese alloy steel for high strength, hardness, and abrasion resistance.
Construction vehicles have smaller road wheels that are designed primarily to prevent track derailment and they are normally contained in a single bogie that includes the idler-wheel and sometimes the sprocket.
Many World War II German military vehicles, initially (starting in the late 1930s) including all vehicles originally designed to be half-tracks and all later tank designs (after the Panzer IV), had slack-track systems, usually driven by a front-located drive sprocket, the track returning along the tops of a design of overlapping and sometimes interleaved large diameter road wheels, as on the suspension systems of the Tiger I and Panther tanks, generically known by the term Schachtellaufwerk (interleaved or overlapping running gear) in German, for both half-track and fully tracked vehicles.
The torsion bars and bearings may stay dry and clean, but the wheels and tread work in mud, sand, rocks, snow, and other surfaces.
To prevent throwing, the inner surface of the track links usually have vertical guide horns engaging grooves, or gaps between the doubled road and idler/sprocket wheels.
Previous belt-like systems, such as those used for half-tracks in World War II, were not as strong, and during military actions were easily damaged.
Additionally, the loss of a single segment in a track immobilizes the entire vehicle, which can be a disadvantage in situations where high reliability is important.
The pioneer manufacturers have been replaced mostly by large tractor companies such as AGCO, Liebherr Group,[45] John Deere, Yanmar, New Holland, Kubota,[46] Case, Caterpillar Inc., CLAAS.
