"The development involved more than $30,000 In experimentation and marketing."
Lloyd E. Griscom, The Historic County of Burlington
For almost a millennium the farming practices of the Saxons remained unchanged. To plow the ground, farmers used the primitive scratch plow developed in Mesopotamia in 5500 B.C.E. The work was laborious.
In 1797 Charles New bold (1764-1835), a blacksmith from New Jersey, patented a practical plow in which the three main parts were made as one solid piece of cast iron. These were the moldboard (a curved iron plate), the share (the cutting edge of the plow attached to the moldboard), and the landslide (the stabilizing mechanism that counteracts the sideways motion of turning over the soil). Newbold also integrated a runner that allowed directional control and therefore straighter furrows.
Farmers were initially wary of Newbold's plow, believing that the cast iron would poison their fields and ruin their crops. Eventually the plow gained acceptance, but this came too late for Newbold to recover his investment—$30,000, a tremendous sum in those days—because competitors had begun to develop similar plows. However, in 1807 Newbold successfully sued David Peacock, who had been issued a patent for a nearly identical plow. Newbold won $1,500 for patent infringement.
Later, Newbold's design was improved upon by producing the three molded parts separately, so that each could be removed and replaced if broken.
