building the american landscape - Univerza v Novi Gorici

in the construction of buildings, the use of colours and in the manufacturing of
objects and furnishings.
The main red brick dormitory, built in 1830, stood out not only for the aesthetic
quality of its interiors, but also for the use of innovative, technological solutions to
improve its comfort. These included windows placed on ceilings or on internal walls
to light and ventilate all the rooms, running water inside and built‐in, sliding
cupboards, such as dumbwaiters, etc. The other buildings were laboratories, in
which they manufactured items with the typical, functional, geometric design, such
as chairs, baskets, brooms, swifts, pails, stoves and tin‐ware.
Outside these communities, however, yet more different landscapes were just
beyond the horizon. Parallel to the flourishing of the first agricultural experiences
by the religious sects, technology started to replace traditional tools with time and
labour‐saving equipment and machinery for the most common and important
agricultural operations. A true revolution took place in the techniques to exploit the
fields. These combined with the multiplication of publications for the sector, which
in turn encouraged the practice and the diffusion of horticulture, as mentioned
previously.
In 1837, John Deere (1804‐1886), the man who gave his name to a famous company
for agricultural machinery still in operation today, invented a plough completely
made of steel 72 , which was an improvement over the wooden plough and was able
to cut and overturn the water‐soaked clods full of roots, typical of the untouched
fields of the Illinois prairies. In the early years, his company produced a rather
modest number of ploughs: 10 ploughs in 1839, 75 in 1841, 400 in 1843.
About ten years after production had begun, he moved to Moline, Illinois, where he
founded a factory using hydraulic force, and with new mechanical improvements
the yearly number of ploughs reached 13,400 in 1857. In the final decades of the
nineteenth century, the small plough had given rise to a thriving industrial activity
and had transformed the landscapes of the Mid‐West prairies, cultivated mainly
with cereals. The company catalogue (see page 268) for 1898 had over 350 pages,
72 There are some different theses about the materials and the history of Deere’s plough: KENDALL,
Edward C., “John Deere’s steel plow”, Bulletin (United States National Museum) Contributions from
the Museum of History and Technology, Smithsonian Institution, 1959, pp.15‐25
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