Editing Plough (section)

===Balance plough===

[[File:Heißdampf-Kipppflug.jpg|thumb|A German balance plough. The left-turning set of shares have just completed a pass, and the right-turning shares are about to enter the ground to return across the field.|234x234px]]
The invention of the mobile [[steam engine]] allowed steam power to be applied to ploughing from about 1850. In Europe, soil conditions were often too soft to support the weight of a [[traction engine]]. Instead, counterbalanced, wheeled ploughs, known as ''balance ploughs'', were drawn by cables across the fields by pairs of [[ploughing engine]]s on opposite field edges, or by a single engine drawing directly towards it at one end and drawing away from it via a pulley at the other. The balance plough had two sets of facing ploughs arranged so that when one was in the ground, the other was lifted in the air. When pulled in one direction, the trailing ploughs were lowered onto the ground by the tension on the cable. When the plough reached the edge of the field, the other engine pulled the opposite cable, and the plough tilted (balanced), putting the other set of shares into the ground, and the plough worked back across the field.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}

One set of ploughs was right-handed and the other left-handed, allowing continuous ploughing along the field, as with the [[#Turn-wrest plough|turn-wrest]] and [[#Reversible plough|reversible plough]]s. The man credited with inventing the ploughing engine and associated balance plough in the mid-19th century was [[John Fowler (agricultural engineer)|John Fowler]], an English agricultural engineer and inventor.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/ff114b8c-c253-4c55-89cf-c86db6b67708 |title=The Discovery Service |last=Archives |first=The National |website=discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk |language=en-GB |access-date=2017-09-26 |quote=Patent litigation [TR FOW/CO5/116-137] is mainly concerned with a Chancery case of 1863 between John Fowler and his patent assignees in trust against James and Frederick Howard of Bedford for alleged infringement of his patents by the manufacture of balance ploughs.}}</ref> However the Fisken brothers demonstrated (and went on to patent) a balance plough about 4 years before Fowler.<ref name=Haining104>{{cite book |last1=Haining |first1=John|last2=Tyler |first2=John |date=1985 |title=Ploughing by Steam A History of Steam Cultivation Over the Years |publisher=Ashgrove press |pages=104–105 |isbn=0906798493}}</ref>  One notable producer of steam-powered ploughs was [[Kemna Bau|J.Kemna]] of Eastern Prussia, who became the "leading steam plough company on the European continent and penetrated the monopoly of English companies on the world market"<ref>{{Cite web|last=Biographie|first=Deutsche|title=Kemna, Julius - Deutsche Biographie|url=https://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd141491124.html#ndbcontent|access-date=2020-07-18|website=www.deutsche-biographie.de|language=de}}</ref> at the beginning of the 20th century.{{citation needed|date=February 2022}}