The first of three books looking in depth at David Brown and its products, this work begins by tracing the roots of this famous Yorkshire firm back to Huddersfield and its origins in wooden pattern making in the 1860s. Pioneering work in machine-cut gears at the turn of the century brought fame to the company and set it on the road to becoming one of the world’s largest gear manufacturers.
David Brown’s involvement with tractors began in 1936 through an agreement to produce them for Harry Ferguson. It was an unhappy and short-lived partnership, but the lessons learnt with the Ferguson-Brown gave the company the experience it needed to introduce its own tractor, the VAK1, in 1939.
David Brown’s agricultural tractor production was curtailed by the war, but valuable defence contracts propelled the company into other directions from Spitfire gears and tank gearboxes to aircraft-towing tractors and heavy crawlers. It emerged from the conflict in a strong position with many post-war developments in the pipeline.
This closely researched, highly illustrated book tells the full story of this remarkable company’s early years for the first time, concluding with the introduction of the VAK1/C Cropmaster which became one of Britain’s most popular tractors of the 1950s.