In the 197o's the western world suffered the first of the "oil shocks" - the price of fossil oil products went up dramatically. The same decade saw the realisation that industrial pollution was beginning to seriously affect weather, and smog in some cities was becoming an intolerable problem. Global cooling was the flavour of the decade - the green movement got underway and many countries and states introduced legislation concerning motor vehicle and industrial emissions - the drive to find "alternative energies" had started.

At that time an Australian engineer, Ted Pritchard (pictured above), built, tested and demonstrated a "modern steam" vehicle. A 1963 Ford Falcon with a V twin engine and a very efficient lightweight steam generator that went from cold to full presure in minutes and could burn almost any liquid fuel available. The car was driven for thousands of miles around Australia and the US and easily passed the stringent Californian emission regulations then proposed. Quiet and smooth, with just the occasional hum from the burner fans to indicate it was even running, the power plant demonstrated just how far the "steam car" could have developed if the internal combustion engine had not by then become the "locked in" power source for the motor car.

As a multi-fuel, environmentally friendly, vehicle this 30 year old upgrade to a 40 year old car is still unbeaten, however - as with many such developments - the reason it did not catch on had little to do with technical matters, it was simply the victim of the motor industries inability to adapt to change in such a radical manner. Almost all industrial and technology improvements are incremental in nature - a reality we face every day in this project, where almost every step involves a radical change to the way things are - or at least percieved to be.

The "Escaping Lock" paper linked on this page explains it well - albeit in the case of the electric car - however it is relevant to all "entrenched" technologies. For this tractor we have no such limitations - this power plant, and the use of a well known tractor technology, serves as a good starting point. Ted Pritchards own homesite describes it as technology "ahead of its time" - now perhaps its time has come as a quiet multifuel powerplant for a tractor that can be in total harmony with the environment while contributing both to Africas economic development and the western worlds need for cleaner fuels.