History

1882 Harrison Machine Works steam-powered tractor

The first powered farm implements in the early 19th century were – steam engines on wheels that could be used to drive mechanical farm machinery by way of a flexible belt. Around 1850, the first were developed from these, and were widely adopted for agricultural use. The first tractors were steam-powered . 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. Where soil conditions permitted (as in the United States),  were used to direct-haul plows, but in the UK and elsewhere, plowing engines were used for cable-hauled plowing, instead. Steam-powered  remained in use well into the 20th century until reliable internal combustion engines had been developed.
In 1892,  invented and built the first gasoline/petrol-powered tractor in USA. A Van Duzen single-cylinder gasoline engine was mounted on a Robinson engine chassis, which could be controlled and propelled by Froelich's gear boxAfter receiving a patent, Froelich started u, investing all of his assets, which by 1895, all would be lost and his business resigned to become a failure.

A very early, hand-built gasoline powered tractor

After graduating from the University of Wisconsin, Charles W. Hart and Charles H. Parr developed a two-cylinder gasoline engine and set up their business in Charles City, Iowa. In 1903, the firm built 15 "tractors", a term with Latin roots coined by Hart and Parr, and a combination of the words traction and power. Their 14,000-pound #3 is the oldest surviving internal combustion engine tractor in the United States, and is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington D.C. The two-cylinder engine has a unique hit-and-miss firing cycle that produced 30 horsepower at the belt and 18 at the drawbar.