THE    IVEL  

and Dan ALBONE

INTRODUCTION

Dan Albone was famous for the invention and production of the IVEL Agricultural Motor (the word ‘tractor’ had not been coined at the time of its invention.).  He was born on the 12^th of September 1860 and died on the 30 October 1906). Dan was born in Biggleswade in Bedfordshire England and was the youngest of eight children. They were brought up in the local inn which has father owned, the Ongley Arms, in Short Mead Street on the Great North Road.

The Ivel Agricultural Motor was the first small tractor to be produced and sold in any reasonable numbers in the world and this was all to do with the entrepreneurial talents of Dan Albone.

When he was a young lad aged 13, he became an apprentice to a firm of engineers and millwrights and round about this time he became an enthusiastic cyclist. Eventually he started to design and make his own cycles and sold them from the Home Workshop situated behind the Ongley arms. His cycle business gradually grew bigger and in 1880 the cycle business was renamed the Ivel Cycle Works and worked from premises behind the Ivel Hotel. The river on which Biggleswade was situated is called the River Ivel hence the name His cycling business was very successful and he sold to racing cyclists as well as the public and in fact took part in races himself. Dan then designed and built a motor car in 1898.

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The Ivel Agricultural Motor is Born

After producing his car, Dan Albone had an idea that he could produce a motor or tractor which would be much better than using horses or traction engines so he researched and planned for five years and eventually produced his first tractor in 1901. He named his tractor THE IVEL, again after the river that ran through Biggleswade. In February 1902 he patented his tractor design and on the 12^th of December in 1902 he registered his tractor business as a limited company namely ‘Ivel Agricultural Motors’.

In the early 1900s very few farms were mechanised. Small to medium sized farms relied on horses and only very large farms and estates utilised steam power in the form of traction engines. Traction engines were big heavy beasts and as well as being very expensive they compacted the land and because of their size, manoeuvrability was not good. They were too big and expensive to be used in medium to small farms.

Dan Albone’s invention the Ivel Agricultural Motor was the first small successful tractor to replace horses and to sell in reasonably large numbers The Saunderson also made in Bedfordshire was also a successful tractor being slightly bigger and coming just a few years after the lunch of the IVEL.

The Tractor

The tractor was based on a three wheel design with one wheel at the front and two at the back, built on a rigid frame of heavy channelled steel. The two rear drive wheels were 41 inches in diameter and 7 ½ inches wide and were fitted with cross straits to give extra grip. The engine was mounted in the middle and there was a single speed gearbox with one forward and one reverse gear. Beside the driver at the back of the tractor was a large tank which held water for the cooling system. It also added weight to the rear driving wheels to give them added traction. The tractor was powered initially by car type engines. The two cylinder, horizontal water cooled engine ran on petrol but an IVEL vaporizer could be bought for £12 which allowed the tractor to run on paraffin. The first tractors produced 8HP but improvements increase this to 24 HP by 1913. The back axle was driven by two chains from the engine. Later models had a bonnet cover which could be removed for access to the engine. A pulley was fitted for driving threshing machines, mills, pumps, chaff cutters etc. The whole thing weighed 37cwt and this was distributed between three wide wheels which resulted in very little compaction (much less compaction even than cattle would produce).

Advantages of the Ivel Tractor Over the Horse and Traction Engine

The IVEL was small enough to be of use on small to medium sized farms where horses were the source of power and it was much lighter than a traction engine allowing it to be used without compacting the soil. Because of its size it was much more manoeuvrable than a traction engine. This invention allowed the mechanisation of small farms to start.

A comparison of the cost to plough 2.25 acres between horses, traction engines and the Ivel was carried out and the results were as follows:

HORSES                             9 horses         £1-2s-6d

                                             3 men                  9s-0d

                                             3 lads                  3s-0d

                                         TOTAL            £1-14s-6d

TRACTION ENGINE      Steam engine    £1-7s-0d

                       Coal, water and carting        11s-3d

                                           TOTAL          £1-18s-3d

THE IVEL                            Driver                4s-6d

                                             Ploughman      2s-6d

                                       Lubricating oil       2s-0d

                                              Petrol             10s-6d

                                            TOTAL             19s-6d

The amounts shown are obviously in pre decimalisation currency-that is pounds (£), shillings (s) and pence (d).  After decimalisation £1 was equal to 20 shillings, 5 new pence was equal to 1shilling and 2.5 new pence was equal to 6d. So in todays post decimalisation currencey the horse total was £1-72.5p, the traction engine total was £1.91p and the Ivel total £0-97.5p

So the promotional blurb was well in favour of the Ivel. However the cost to buy the Ivel was quite high so although interest in the tractor was keen, many were unable to afford it straight away.

Promotion of the IVEL

Dan Albone was an expert at promoting and advertising his new invention. He produced a brochure explaining all the advantages and statistics of the machine. Anothe one of the main ways by which he promoted the Ivel was to do numerous demonstrations both on a plot of land close to the Inn where he grew up and also various shows around the country. He gave fortnightly demonstrations of his tractor at work and these were always well attended with farmers keen to see the new invention.

The tractor earned many awards at agricultural shows and had very influential write ups in the newspapers and agricultural publications.

Orders soon came in for the IVEL both from this country and indeed from many countries abroad.

The cost of the tractor was £355 which was quite expensive in the early 1900s. Other additions were available. A vaporizer to allow paraffin to be used was an additional £12. A mower/reaper attachment cost £6-10s, a sun shade for the motor cost £10-10s, a 3-furrow plough cost £17 and a 2-furrow plough cost £14 and finally a cultivator would set you back £13.

The use of lightweight versatile tractors able to be used on small farms was established by the Ivel and this together with the many tractor brands that followed led to a gradual reduction of the use of horses on the land and therefore numbers of horses on farms declined. In the year 1900 there were approximately 3.25 million horses working in Britain. This had declined to one million in 1940 and 30,000 in 1960 as mechanisation replaced horse power. (The 30,000 in 1960 were mainly used in forestry.)

The Decline of the IVEL

On the 30^th of October 1906 Dan Albone died from a seizure. His early death at 46 years left the company up in the air. Dan Albone was the driving force of the business and without his innovation development abilities the projects he had planned, like a larger tractor with two speed gears a new engine etc were cancelled. The company struggled on just making minor tweaks and went into decline from 1910. The Ivel design was unchanged until 1920 and as a result had become outdated. Herbert Saundersen’s tractors were beginning to overtake the IVEL in terms of performance and numbers sold.

New tractor makes were imported from the USA during World War I to help with the war effort and these proved better in terms of performance and price so production of the IVEL decreased. The Ivel company built a Hart-Parr under licence but that venture failed and the company ran into debt so eventually in 1920 the IVEL Agricultural Motor Company went into receivership, its assets being bought by United Motor Industries.

Round about 500 IVEL tractors were built in total and as well as being used in the UK they were exported all over the world. It ceased to exist because the innovation and development ideas died along with its inventor in 19O6. If Dan hadn’t died so young he could well have been remembered up there with people like Ferguson, Brown, Ford etc.

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