Jensen Motors
Jensen Motors Limited was a British manufacturer of sports cars and commercial vehicles in West Bromwich, England. Brothers Alan and Richard Jensen gave the new name, Jensen Motors Limited, to the commercial body and sports car body making business of W J Smith & Sons Limited in 1934, it ceased trading in 1976. Though trading resumed in 1998 Jensen Motors Limited was dissolved in 2011. Jensen Motors built specialist car bodies for major manufacturers alongside cars of their own design using engines and mechanicals of major manufacturers Ford and Chrysler; the rights to Jensen's trademarks were bought with the company and it operated in Speke, from 1998 to 2002. Under subsequent owners, a new version of the Jensen Interceptor was announced in 2011, it was planned to bring manufacture of that new model back to the former Jaguar motor plant in Browns Lane, Coventry. In 1926 young Alan Jensen and his brother Richard Jensen built a new boat-tailed sporting body on one of the first Chummy baby Austins.
It was seen by chief engineer of Standard Motor Company. He persuaded Alan Jensen to join New Avon Body Co, a Standard Motor associate and under Wilde’s aegis Alan Jensen designed the first Standard Avon open two-seaters produced from 1929 to 1933, he went on to design two more cars for Avon moved with his brother Richard to Austin dealers Edgbaston Garage Limited, Bournbrook, in a building still standing next to the University of Birmingham campus. Edgbaston Garage, a car servicing business, had been bought for his son in 1929 by J A M Patrick's father. Young Joe Patrick, involved in all fields of motor sport, was setting up a coachbuilding operation. For his Edgbaston Garage the Jensen brothers made handsome bodies for the new Wolseley Hornet and Hornet Special chassis. To the concern of the brothers their cars were advertised as The Patrick Special and so in 1931 the brothers moved again. Edgbaston Garage became Patrick Motors Limited; the Jensen brothers had gone to work for lorry body maker W J Smith & Sons in Carters Green in West Bromwich again to build bodies for small sports cars including more Wolseley Hornet Specials.
This was a quite separate development. Their own name was on the product. In 1934 Smith died and the brothers managed to buy a controlling shareholding in Smith & Sons, they changed the name of W J Smith & Sons to Jensen Motors Limited. Smith's announced an open 4-seater and a lowered 2-seater in May 1931 both to be known as Jensen Wolseley Hornets, they expanded to build exclusive customised bodies for standard cars produced by several manufacturers of the day including Morris, Standard, as well as Wolseley. In 1934 they were commissioned by American film actor Clark Gable to design and build a car for him based on a Ford V-8 chassis; the resultant car won them much acclaim and stimulated huge interest in their work, including a deal with Ford to produce a run of Jensen-Fords with Jensen bodywork with a Ford chassis and engine. In 1934 they started to design their first true production car under the name White Lady; this evolved into the Jensen S-type which went into production in 1935. In the late 1930s Jensen diversified into the production of commercial vehicles under the marque JNSN, including the manufacture of a series of innovative lightweight trucks, built with unrestricted aluminium alloys, for Reynolds Tube and the prototype for the articulated Jen-Tug which went into production in the late 1940s.
During World War II Jensen concentrated on the war effort and produced components for military vehicles including the turrets for tanks, on the production of specialised ambulances and fire-engines. After the war production of the Jen-Tug thrived and Jensen produced a new range of JNSN lightweight diesel trucks and chassis which were used for a variety of vehicles including pantechnicons and buses. A handful of Jensen buses and coaches were produced for independent operators into the 1950s, with Perkins diesel engines, David Brown gearboxes, bodywork by a variety of bodybuilders of the time, which had the distinctive large JNSN marque cut into the sheet metal on the front of the bus, below the windscreen. In the 1950s Jensen were chosen by the British Motor Corporation to build the bodies for the four-wheel-drive Austin Gipsy. In 1958 they built a small number of a German original design, under licence. Production of cars ceased during the war years, but by 1946 a new vehicle was offered, the Jensen PW.
Few were produced since raw materials were limited by the new government's central planning. In 1946 body designer Eric Neale joined Jensen Motors from Wolseley and his first project was the more modern coupé which followed in 1950, named the Interceptor, built until 1957. In 1955, Jensen started production of Neale's masterpiece, the 541, which used the then-revolutionary material of fibreglass for its bodywork; the radiator grille was covered by an unusual driver-controlled swivelling flap. The 541S was replaced by another Neale design, the C-V8 in October 1962, which replaced the Austin-sourced straight-6 of the previous cars with a 6-litre American Chrysler V8; this large engine in such a lightweight car made the Jensen one of the fastest four-seaters of the time. For its eventual replacement, the Interceptor, Jensen turned to the Italian coachbuilder, Carrozzeria Touring, for the body design, to steel for the material. First displayed alongside the production C-V8 FF in October 1965 and put into production in the second half of 1966 the bodyshells themselves were built by Vignale of Italy and by Jensen.
The same 383 cu in Chrysler wedge-head powerplant was used in the earlier cars with the ca
Haas F1 Team
Haas Formula LLC, competing as Rich Energy Haas F1 Team, is a Formula One racing team established by NASCAR Monster Energy Cup Series team co-owner Gene Haas in April 2014. The team intended to make its début at the start of the 2015 season, but elected to postpone their entry until the 2016 season; the team is headquartered in Kannapolis, North Carolina – 50 km from Charlotte – alongside sister team and NASCAR entrant Stewart-Haas Racing, though the two teams are separate entities. The team established a second forward base in Banbury in Oxfordshire for the purpose of turning cars around between races during the European part of the calendar. From 2019, the team will be rebranded as Rich Energy Haas F1 Team, following a multi-year title sponsorship agreement with Rich Energy, a British energy drink brand. Haas was the first constructor to submit an F1 entry after the failed US F1 project in 2010, it is the first American team to compete since the unrelated Haas Lola outfit raced in the 1985 and 1986 seasons.
The Haas Lola team was owned by former McLaren boss Teddy Mayer and Carl Haas, not related to Gene Haas. Following the collapse of Marussia F1 during the 2014 season and the auctioning of their assets, Haas purchased the team's Banbury headquarters to serve as a forward base for their operations. Unrestricted by testing regulations until the time the team entered Formula One, Haas shook its new car down in December 2015 ahead of official pre-season testing at Barcelona in early 2016. Haas approached Italian manufacturer Dallara to build their chassis, with a power unit supplied by Ferrari. Former Jaguar and Red Bull Racing technical director Guenther Steiner is the team principal. Haas confirmed its new car had passed the mandatory FIA crash tests on January 8, 2016; the team announced on September 29, 2015 that Romain Grosjean would be one of their drivers for 2016. On October 30, 2015 during the Mexican Grand Prix weekend, it was announced that Ferrari test driver Esteban Gutiérrez would join the team for 2016.
Haas's approach of establishing a far-reaching partnership with Ferrari was met with a mixed response from the paddock. The team was applauded for pioneering a low-cost model that would allow new teams to enter the sport and be competitive, of concern to the sport following the collapse of HRT and Caterham, ongoing financial problems that had threatened Marussia and Lotus. Conversely, Haas's approach was criticized by smaller, privateer teams who had invested in their own infrastructure and expressed concerns about the close relationship between manufacturers and satellite teams handing more political power to the sport's larger teams. In 2018 the team was again coming under fire from competitors after the team showed up at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya for winter testing with a car that resembled the Ferrari SF70H. McLaren and Force India both criticized the partnership between Haas. While no official grievance has been filled with the FIA, McLaren boss Zak Brown has questioned the relationship.
In the team's debut at the opening Australian Grand Prix, Grosjean finished 6th, scoring eight points for the team, which became the first American constructor to win points in its first F1 race and the first constructor overall since Toyota Racing in 2002 to record points in its debut. At the same race his teammate, Gutiérrez crashed out in an incident which destroyed former world champion Fernando Alonso's McLaren and caused the race to be temporarily red-flagged. Another impressive race followed in Bahrain. Although the rest of the season the team fell off the pace, only scoring points on two more occasions, it was Grosjean. On November 11, 2016, the team announced that Kevin Magnussen would drive alongside Grosjean in 2017, replacing Gutiérrez. In the first race of the season, the team scored its best qualifying effort, with Grosjean piloting the VF-17 to 6th place. However, in the race, one of the issues, hampering the performance of Kevin Magnussen throughout the weekend struck again, forcing both cars to retire from the race.
The second race weekend proved better for the team as Kevin Magnussen finished 8th, scoring his first points since his 10th-place finish in the 2016 Singapore Grand Prix, Haas's first points since the 2016 United States Grand Prix, where Grosjean finished 10th. The team's success would continue in 2017 as Haas would go on to get their first double points finish in Monaco, where Grosjean finished eighth and Magnussen tenth, with the Williams of Felipe Massa between them; the team finished 8th place in the constructors' title for the 2nd straight year after being surpassed by the Renault Sport Formula One Team in the final races. On February 14, 2018, Haas unveiled their new car, the VF-18. Following a strong showing during winter testing, Haas again showed up in Australia with a competitive car. During the Grand Prix, they were running in 4th and 5th positions which would have given them their best result and half of their 2017 points tally, but both cars retired one lap after their respective pit stops, triggering a Virtual Safety Car that affected the ending of the race.
They would match this 4th and 5th place result in Austria, where they surpassed their 2017 points total after only nine races. At the Singapore Grand Prix, Magnussen scored Haas' first fastest lap. 2018 was their best season to date, finishing fifth in the Constructors' Championship, one point short of doubling their previous year's performance. The team will be
British Grand Prix
The British Grand Prix is a race in the calendar of the FIA Formula One World Championship. It is held at the Silverstone Circuit near the village of Silverstone in Northamptonshire in England; the 2018 event was the 69th time that the race had been run as a World Championship event since the inaugural season in 1950, the 52nd time that a World Championship round had been held at Silverstone. The British race is the oldest in the Formula One calendar as the 1950 race at Silverstone was round one of the first championship season in 1950, it and the Italian Grand Prix are the only two Formula One World Championship Grands Prix that have been staged during every season that the championship has been held. It was designated the European Grand Prix five times between 1950 and 1977, when this title was an honorary designation given each year to one Grand Prix race in Europe. All British Grands Prix dating back to 1926 have been held in England. Since 1948, it has been customary that the winner of the race is awarded the British Grand Prix Trophy.
The concrete Brooklands oval was built in 1907 near Weybridge in Surrey, located just outside the British capital of London. It was the first purpose-built motor racing venue, as well as one of the first airfields in the United Kingdom. Grand Prix motor racing was first established in Britain by Henry Segrave in 1926 after his winning of the 1923 French Grand Prix and the San Sebastián Grand Prix the following year, which raised interest in the sport; the first British Grand Prix was won by the French team of Louis Wagner and Robert Sénéchal driving a Delage 155B. The second British Grand Prix was held at Brooklands in 1927. Several non-championship races known as the Donington Grand Prix were held at Donington Park which attracted the best European teams in 1937 and 1938, where the German Mercedes and Auto Unions dominated the proceedings. Drivers such as German Bernd Rosemeyer and Italian Tazio Nuvolari won this race. Brooklands had been damaged by the onset of World War II and the circuit was abandoned.
Most new British circuits were being built on disused Royal Air Force airfields, Silverstone, located in Northamptonshire in central England, was one of those circuits. It staged its first race, the Royal Automobile Club International Grand Prix on 2 October 1948, won by Italian Luigi Villoresi in a Maserati. In 1949, the circuit was modified and made fast. In 1950, the World Championship of Drivers was introduced, the 1950 British Grand Prix was the first World Championship Formula One race held, with new regulations and 6 other races in Europe; this race was won by Alfa Romeo driver Giuseppe "Nino" Farina. King George VI was among the attendees of the race; the 1951 race was exciting, as it was the first F1 race not won by an Alfa Romeo. For the 1952 event, the original pits between Abbey and Woodcote was demolished. A new pit complex was constructed between Copse corners. In 1955, the Formula One circus began to alternate between Silverstone and the Aintree circuit, located on the Grand National horse racing course near Liverpool.
Mercedes drivers Juan Manuel Fangio and home favourite Stirling Moss arrived at Aintree expecting to win. They took the lead at the start and the two drivers battled throughout, Moss passed Fangio on the 26th lap, but he didn't, Moss won his first Formula One race on home soil. Moss asked Fangio "did you let me through?" and the Argentine replied "No. You were better than me that day." Mercedes romped to the finish 1-2-3-4, with German Karl Kling and Italian Piero Taruffi finishing 3rd and 4th. The even-numbered years were at Silverstone and the odd numbered and 1962 were at Aintree. 1956 saw Fangio win in a Ferrari, 1957 returned to see Moss win again in a Vanwall. This was the first Grand Prix victory for a British-built car- Formula One would soon be made up of British teams. 1958 was when Peter Collins won in a Ferrari and Bernie Ecclestone was entered in a Connaught but his car was driven by Jack Fairman. The last race at Aintree was in 1962. 1964 saw the first Formula One race at the southern English circuit known as Brands Hatch, located in Kent, just outside London.
The track was built in the early 1950s and had been extended in 1960. Silverstone hosted the British Grand Prix in odd-numbered years and Brands Hatch in even-numbered years. Like Silverstone, the circuit was popular with drivers, unlike the flat Northamptonshire circuit and Aintree, Brands Hatch had many cambered corners and lots of elevation change. Like the year before at Silverstone, Clark won the 1964 race, the next year's race. 1967 saw Clark take yet another dominant win, 1968 saw a monumental battle between Swiss Jo Siffert in a Lotus and New Zealander Chris Amon in a Ferrari.
Scuderia Ferrari
Scuderia Ferrari S.p. A. is the racing division of luxury Italian auto manufacturer Ferrari and the racing team that competes in Formula One racing. The team is nicknamed "The Prancing Horse", with reference to their logo, it is the oldest surviving and most successful Formula One team, having competed in every world championship since the 1950 Formula One season. The team was founded by Enzo Ferrari to race cars produced by Alfa Romeo, though by 1947 Ferrari had begun building its own cars. Among its important achievements outside Formula One are winning the World Sportscar Championship, 24 Hours of Le Mans, 24 Hours of Spa, 24 Hours of Daytona, 12 Hours of Sebring, Bathurst 12 Hour, races for Grand tourer cars and racing on road courses of the Targa Florio, the Mille Miglia and the Carrera Panamericana; as a constructor, Ferrari has a record 16 Constructors' Championships, the last of, won in 2008. Alberto Ascari, Juan Manuel Fangio, Mike Hawthorn, Phil Hill, John Surtees, Niki Lauda, Jody Scheckter, Michael Schumacher and Kimi Räikkönen have won a record 15 Drivers' Championships for the team.
Since Räikkönen's title in 2007 the team narrowly lost out on the 2008 drivers' title with Felipe Massa and the 2010 and 2012 drivers' titles with Fernando Alonso. Michael Schumacher is the team's most successful driver. Joining the team in 1996 and departing in 2006 he won five drivers' titles and 72 Grands Prix for the team, his titles came consecutively between 2000 and 2004, the team won consecutive constructors' title from 1999 until the end of 2004. Sebastian Vettel and Charles Leclerc are the two main race drivers; the team is known for its passionate support base known as the tifosi. The Italian Grand Prix at Monza is regarded as the team's home race; the Scuderia Ferrari team was founded by Enzo Ferrari on 16 November 1929 and became the racing team of Alfa Romeo and racing Alfa Romeo cars. In 1938, Alfa Romeo management made the decision to re-enter racing under its own name, establishing the Alfa Corse organisation, which absorbed what had been Scuderia Ferrari. Enzo Ferrari disagreed with this change in policy and was dismissed by Alfa in 1939.
The terms of his leaving forbade him from motorsport for a period of four years. In 1939, Ferrari started work on a racecar of his own, the Tipo 815; the 815s, designed by Alberto Massimino, were thus the first Ferrari cars. World War II put a temporary end to racing, Ferrari concentrated on an alternative use for his factory during the war years, doing machine tool work. After the war, Ferrari recruited several of his former Alfa colleagues and established a new Scuderia Ferrari, which would design and build its own cars; the team was based in Modena from its pre-war founding until 1943, when Enzo Ferrari moved the team to a new factory in Maranello in 1943, both Scuderia Ferrari and Ferrari's roadcar factory remain at Maranello to this day. The team owns and operates a test track on the same site, the Fiorano Circuit built in 1972, used for testing road and race cars; the team is named after Enzo Ferrari. Scuderia is Italian for a stable reserved for racing horses and is commonly applied to Italian motor racing teams.
The prancing horse was the symbol on Italian World War I ace Francesco Baracca's fighter plane, became the logo of Ferrari after the fallen ace's parents, close acquaintances of Enzo Ferrari, suggested that Ferrari use the symbol as the logo of the Scuderia, telling him it would'bring him good luck'. In May 1947, Ferrari constructed the 12-cylinder, 1.5 L Tipo 125, the first racing car to bear the Ferrari name. A Formula One version of the Tipo 125, the Ferrari 125 F1 was developed in 1948 and entered in several Grands Prix, at the time a World Championship had not yet been established. In 1950, the Formula One World Championship was established, Scuderia Ferrari entered in this first season, it is the only team to have competed in every season of the World Championship, from its inception to the current day. In fact the Ferrari team missed the first race of the championship, the 1950 British Grand Prix, due to a dispute about the'start money' paid to entrants, the team debuted in the 1950 Monaco Grand Prix with the 125 F1, sporting a supercharged version of the 125 V12, three experienced and successful drivers, Alberto Ascari, Raymond Sommer and Gigi Villoresi.
The company switched to the large-displacement aspirated formula for the 275, 340, 375 F1 cars. The Alfa Romeo team dominated the 1950 Formula One season, winning all eleven events it entered, but Ferrari broke their streak in 1951 when rotund driver José Froilán González took first place at the 1951 British Grand Prix. After the 1951 Formula One season the Alfa team withdrew from F1, causing the authorities to adopt the Formula Two regulations due to the lack of suitable F1 cars. Ferrari entered the 2.0 L 4-cyl Ferrari Tipo 500, which went on to win every race in which it competed in the 1952 Formula One season with drivers Ascari, Giuseppe Farina, Piero Taruffi. In the 1953 Formula One season, Ascari won only five races but another world title; the 1954 Formula One season brought new rules for 2.5 L engines. Ferrari had only two wins, González at the 1954 British Grand Prix and Mike Hawthorn a
Coventry
Coventry is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands, England. Part of Warwickshire, Coventry is the 9th largest city in England and the 12th largest in the United Kingdom, it is the second largest city in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham. Coventry is 19 miles east-southeast of Birmingham, 24 miles southwest of Leicester, 11 miles north of Warwick and 94 miles northwest of London. Coventry is the most central city in England, being only 11 miles south-southwest of the country's geographical centre in Leicestershire; the current Coventry Cathedral was built after the majority of the 14th century cathedral church of Saint Michael was destroyed by the Luftwaffe in the Coventry Blitz of 14 November 1940. Coventry motor companies have contributed to the British motor industry; the city has two universities, Coventry University in the city centre and the University of Warwick on the southern outskirts. On 7 December 2017, the city won the title of UK City of Culture 2021, after beating Paisley, Stoke-on-Trent and Sunderland to the title.
They will be the third title holder, of the quadrennial award which began in 2013. The Romans founded a settlement in Baginton, next to the River Sowe, another formed around a Saxon nunnery, founded c. AD 700 by St Osburga, left in ruins by King Canute's invading Danish army in 1016. Earl Leofric of Mercia and his wife Lady Godiva built on the remains of the nunnery and founded a Benedictine monastery in 1043 dedicated to St Mary. In time, a market was established at the settlement expanded. Coventry Castle was a bailey castle in the city, it was built in the early 12th century by 4th Earl of Chester. Its first known use was during The Anarchy when Robert Marmion, a supporter of King Stephen, expelled the monks from the adjacent priory of Saint Mary in 1144, converted it into a fortress from which he waged a battle against the Earl. Marmion perished in the battle, it was demolished in the late 12th century and St Mary's Guildhall was built on part of the site. It is assumed. By the 14th century, Coventry was an important centre of the cloth trade, throughout the Middle Ages was one of the largest and most important cities in England.
The bishops of Lichfield were referred to as bishops of Coventry and Lichfield, or Lichfield and Coventry. Coventry claimed the status of a city by ancient prescriptive usage, was granted a charter of incorporation in 1345, in 1451 became a county in its own right; the plays that William Shakespeare witnessed in Coventry during his boyhood or'teens' may have influenced how his plays, such as Hamlet, came about. In the 18th and 19th centuries, Coventry became one of the three main British centres of watch and clock manufacture and ranked alongside Prescot, in Lancashire and Clerkenwell in London; as the industry declined, due to competition from Swiss Made clock and watch manufacturers, the skilled pool of workers proved crucial to the setting up of bicycle manufacture and the motorbike, machine tool and aircraft industries. In the late 19th century, Coventry became a major centre of bicycle manufacture; the industry energised by the invention by James Starley and his nephew John Kemp Starley of the Rover safety bicycle, safer and more popular than the pioneering penny-farthing.
The company became Rover. By the early 20th century, bicycle manufacture had evolved into motor manufacture, Coventry became a major centre of the British motor industry; the research and design headquarters of Jaguar Cars is in the city at their Whitley plant and although vehicle assembly ceased at the Browns Lane plant in 2004, Jaguar's head office returned to the city in 2011, is sited in Whitley. Jaguar is owned by Tata Motors. With many of the city's older properties becoming unfit for habitation, the first council houses were let to their tenants in 1917. With Coventry's industrial base continuing to soar after the end of the Great War a year numerous private and council housing developments took place across the city in the 1920s and 1930s; the development of a southern by-pass around the city, starting in the 1930s and being completed in 1940, helped deliver more urban areas to the city on rural land. Coventry suffered severe bomb damage during the Second World War. There was a massive Luftwaffe air raid that the Germans called Operation Moonlight Sonata, part of the "Coventry Blitz", on 14 November 1940.
Firebombing on this date led to severe damage to large areas of the city centre and to Coventry's historic cathedral, leaving only a shell and the spire. More than 4,000 houses were damaged or destroyed, along with around three quarters of the city's industrial plants. More than 800 people were killed, with thousands injured and homeless. Aside from London and Plymouth, Coventry suffered more damage than any other British city during the Luftwaffe attacks, with huge firestorms devastating most of the city centre; the city was targeted due to its high concentration of armaments, munitions and aero-engine plants which contributed to the British war effort, although there have been claims that Hitler launched the attack as revenge for the bombing of Munich by the RAF six days before the Coventry Blitz and chose the Midlands city because its medieval heart was regarded as one of the finest in Britain. Following the raids, the majority of Coventry's historic buildings could not be saved as they were in ruinous states or were deemed unsafe for any future use.
Several structures were demolished to make way for
Tractor
A tractor is an engineering vehicle designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction. Most the term is used to describe a farm vehicle that provides the power and traction to mechanize agricultural tasks tillage, but nowadays a great variety of tasks. Agricultural implements may be towed behind or mounted on the tractor, the tractor may provide a source of power if the implement is mechanised; the word tractor was taken from Latin, being the agent noun of trahere "to pull". The first recorded use of the word meaning "an engine or vehicle for pulling wagons or ploughs" occurred in 1896, from the earlier term "traction engine". There are many types of tractors, but the main types are rubber wheeled tractors. In the UK, the Republic of Ireland, India, Argentina, Serbia, the Netherlands, Germany, the word "tractor" means "farm tractor", the use of the word "tractor" to mean other types of vehicles is familiar to the vehicle trade, but unfamiliar to much of the general public.
In Canada and the US, the word may refer to the road tractor portion of a tractor trailer truck, but usually refers to the piece of farm equipment. The first powered farm implements in the early 19th century were portable engines – steam engines on wheels that could be used to drive mechanical farm machinery by way of a flexible belt. Richard Trevithick designed the first'semi-portable' stationary steam engine for agricultural use, known as a "barn engine" in 1812, it was used to drive a corn threshing machine; the portable engine was invented in 1839 by William Tuxford of Boston, Lincolnshire who started manufacture of an engine built around a locomotive-style boiler with horizontal smoke tubes. A large flywheel was mounted on the crankshaft, a stout leather belt was used to transfer the drive to the equipment being driven. In the 1850s, John Fowler used a Clayton & Shuttleworth portable engine to drive apparatus in the first public demonstrations of the application of cable haulage to cultivation.
In parallel with the early portable engine development, many engineers attempted to make them self-propelled – the fore-runners of the traction engine. In most cases this was achieved by fitting a sprocket on the end of the crankshaft, running a chain from this to a larger sprocket on the rear axle; these experiments met with mixed success. The first proper traction engine, in the form recognisable today, was developed in 1859 when British engineer Thomas Aveling modified a Clayton & Shuttleworth portable engine, which had to be hauled from job to job by horses, into a self-propelled one; the alteration was made by fitting a long driving chain between the rear axle. The first half of the 1860s was a period of great experimentation but by the end of the decade the standard form of the traction engine had evolved and would change little over the next sixty years, it was adopted for agricultural use. The first tractors were steam-powered plowing engines, they were used in pairs, placed on either side of a field to haul a plow back and forth between them using a wire cable.
In Britain Mann's and Garrett developed steam tractors for direct ploughing, but the heavy, wet soil of England meant that these designs were less economical than a team of horses. In the United States, where soil conditions permitted, steam tractors were used to direct-haul plows. Steam-powered agricultural engines remained in use well into the 20th century until reliable internal combustion engines had been developed. In 1892, John Froelich invented and built the first gasoline/petrol-powered tractor in Clayton County, Iowa, US. A Van Duzen single-cylinder gasoline engine was mounted on a Robinson engine chassis, which could be controlled and propelled by Froelich's gear box. After receiving a patent, Froelich started up the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company and invested all of his assets. However, the venture was unsuccessful, by 1895 all was lost and he went out of business. Richard Hornsby & Sons are credited with producing and selling the first oil-engined tractor in Britain invented by Herbert Akroyd Stuart.
The Hornsby-Akroyd Patent Safety Oil Traction Engine was made in 1896 with a 20 hp engine. In 1897, it was bought by Mr. Locke-King, this is the first recorded sale of a tractor in Britain. In that year, the tractor won a Silver Medal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England; that tractor would be returned to the factory and fitted with a caterpillar track. The first commercially successful light-weight petrol-powered general purpose tractor was built by Dan Albone, a British inventor in 1901, he filed for a patent on 15 February 1902 for his tractor design and formed Ivel Agricultural Motors Limited. The other directors were Charles Jarrott, John Hewitt and Lord Willoughby, he called his machine the Ivel Agricultural Motor. The Ivel Agricultural Motor was light and compact, it had one front wheel, with solid rubber tyre, two large rear wheels like a modern tractor. The engine used water cooling, by evaporation, it had one reverse gear. A pulley wheel on the left hand side allowed it to be used as a stationary engine, driving a wide range of agricultural machinery.
The 1903 sale price was £300. His tractor won a medal at the Royal Agricultural Show, in 1903 and 1904. About 500 were built, many were exported all over the world; the original engine was made by Co. of Coventry. After 1906, French Aster engines were used; the first successful American tractor was built by Charles H. Parr, they d
Europe
Europe is a continent located in the Northern Hemisphere and in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the Mediterranean Sea to the south, it comprises the westernmost part of Eurasia. Since around 1850, Europe is most considered to be separated from Asia by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. Although the term "continent" implies physical geography, the land border is somewhat arbitrary and has been redefined several times since its first conception in classical antiquity; the division of Eurasia into two continents reflects East-West cultural and ethnic differences which vary on a spectrum rather than with a sharp dividing line. The geographic border does not follow political boundaries, with Turkey and Kazakhstan being transcontinental countries. A strict application of the Caucasus Mountains boundary places two comparatively small countries and Georgia, in both continents.
Europe covers 2 % of the Earth's surface. Politically, Europe is divided into about fifty sovereign states of which the Russian Federation is the largest and most populous, spanning 39% of the continent and comprising 15% of its population. Europe had a total population of about 741 million as of 2016; the European climate is affected by warm Atlantic currents that temper winters and summers on much of the continent at latitudes along which the climate in Asia and North America is severe. Further from the sea, seasonal differences are more noticeable than close to the coast. Europe, in particular ancient Greece, was the birthplace of Western civilization; the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD and the subsequent Migration Period marked the end of ancient history and the beginning of the Middle Ages. Renaissance humanism, exploration and science led to the modern era. Since the Age of Discovery started by Portugal and Spain, Europe played a predominant role in global affairs. Between the 16th and 20th centuries, European powers controlled at various times the Americas all of Africa and Oceania and the majority of Asia.
The Age of Enlightenment, the subsequent French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars shaped the continent culturally and economically from the end of the 17th century until the first half of the 19th century. The Industrial Revolution, which began in Great Britain at the end of the 18th century, gave rise to radical economic and social change in Western Europe and the wider world. Both world wars took place for the most part in Europe, contributing to a decline in Western European dominance in world affairs by the mid-20th century as the Soviet Union and the United States took prominence. During the Cold War, Europe was divided along the Iron Curtain between NATO in the West and the Warsaw Pact in the East, until the revolutions of 1989 and fall of the Berlin Wall. In 1949 the Council of Europe was founded, following a speech by Sir Winston Churchill, with the idea of unifying Europe to achieve common goals, it includes all European states except for Belarus and Vatican City. Further European integration by some states led to the formation of the European Union, a separate political entity that lies between a confederation and a federation.
The EU originated in Western Europe but has been expanding eastward since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. The currency of most countries of the European Union, the euro, is the most used among Europeans. In classical Greek mythology, Europa was a Phoenician princess; the word Europe is derived from her name. The name contains the elements εὐρύς, "wide, broad" and ὤψ "eye, countenance", hence their composite Eurṓpē would mean "wide-gazing" or "broad of aspect". Broad has been an epithet of Earth herself in the reconstructed Proto-Indo-European religion and the poetry devoted to it. There have been attempts to connect Eurṓpē to a Semitic term for "west", this being either Akkadian erebu meaning "to go down, set" or Phoenician'ereb "evening, west", at the origin of Arabic Maghreb and Hebrew ma'arav. Michael A. Barry, professor in Princeton University's Near Eastern Studies Department, finds the mention of the word Ereb on an Assyrian stele with the meaning of "night, sunset", in opposition to Asu " sunrise", i.e. Asia.
The same naming motive according to "cartographic convention" appears in Greek Ἀνατολή. Martin Litchfield West stated that "phonologically, the match between Europa's name and any form of the Semitic word is poor." Next to these hypotheses there is a Proto-Indo-European root *h1regʷos, meaning "darkness", which produced Greek Erebus. Most major world languages use words derived from Europa to refer to the continent. Chinese, for example, uses the word Ōuzhōu. In some Turkic languages the Persian name Frangistan is used casually in referring to much of Europe, besides official names such as Avrupa or Evropa; the prevalent definition of Europe as a geographical term has been in use since the mid-19th century. Europe is taken to be bounded by large bodies of water
