Invaluable information and source materials on the earliest pioneering French tractors From 1800 to 1900, many craftsmen invested in building simple animal-drawn farming tools like ploughs, harrows and rollers. Certain workshops remained modest affairs and disappeared; others encouraged by shrewd bosses or inspired inventors developed and went beyond the craftsman stage to become factories. This was the destiny of a very modest local Aubois workshop, run by a talented man who above all devoted himself to developing a machine for threshing cereals and other crops. A century later the company had achieved national prominence and its reputation stretched beyond the boundaries of France; this firm was the Etablissements de Contructions Mecaniques de Vendeuvre (Institution of Mechanical Construction) which during the 1950s strengthened its well established reputation by adding the production of farming tractors to its traditional activities. When the period of excitement caused by the advent of motorisation died down at the end of the 1950s and 1960s, the Etablissements de Construction Mecaniques de Vendeuvre which were second among France's agricultural machine producers, suffered financial problems and were swallowed up by a manufacturer from the other side of the Atlantic before fading away forever. Text written in French language. 300 colour tb/w illustrations
