When the name Henry Ford is mentioned, the first association is typically the automobile. While Ford’s contributions to the early auto industry are widely acknowledged, perhaps less well-known a century later is the role he played in easing the burden of life on a farm—something he experienced first-hand in his youth.

Henry Ford was fascinated with all things mechanical. Thus his thoughts and experiments often focused on how mechanization could make life a bit easier. In his autobiography, My Life and Work, Ford wrote, “To lift farm drudgery off flesh and blood and lay it on steel and motors has been my most constant ambition.” That motivation led him to begin developing a new tractor—originally dubbed the automobile plow—and eventually led to the birth of another mass-produced product in 1917, the Fordson tractor. Ford was the only company to manufacture cars, trucks, and tractors simultaneously.

The timing for the Fordson tractor couldn’t have been better. With hundreds of thousands of farm hands being shipped overseas for The Great War, the tractor made it possible for farmers to cultivate more land with fewer people in less time. Although the Fordson wasn’t the first tractor on the market, in true Ford fashion, the Fordson was more affordable than competitive models, thereby making it widely accessible and wildly successful.

Ford’s vision of relieving the drudgery of manual labor also helped farmers reduce their cost to work the land—something that would later prove invaluable with the onset of the Great Depression. An early government study validated the financial benefits of mechanization when it compared the cost to cultivate one acre of land with a tractor versus horse and plow. The cost to cultivate one acre with a tractor was $0.95 (including fuel, maintenance, and labor). Conversely, the cost for two teams of horses and two drivers was $1.46/ acre (including feed for eight horses for an entire year and wages for two drivers). Both figures excluded the purchase price of tractor and horses.