The agricultural revolution in the 19th century involved two things: the invention of labour-saving machinery and the development of scientific agriculture. Labour - saving machinery naturally appeared first here labour was scarce, ‘in Europe,” said Thomas Jefferson, “the object is to make the most of their land, labour being abundant; here it is to make the most of our labour, land being abundant.” It was in the United States, therefore, that the great advances in 19th century agricultural machinery first came.

At the opening of the century, with the exception of a crude plough, farmers could have carried practically all of the existing agricultural implements on their back; by 1860, most of the machinery in use today had been designed in an early form. The most important of the early inventions was the iron plough. As early as 1790 Charles Newbold of New Jersey had been working on the idea of a cast - iron plough and spent his entire fortune introducing his invention. The farmers, however, were not interested in it, claiming that the iron poisoned the soil and made the weeds grow. Nevertheless, many people devoted their attention to the plough, until in 1869 James Oliver of Indiana turned out the first chilled - steel plough.