Plow

Plow, implement for tilling the soil: breaking up the surface crust for sowing and turning under stubble and manure. Essentially it is a horizontal blade (the share) that cuts the furrow and a projecting moldboard to turn the soil over. Plows have been used since the Bronze Age. Roman plows had an iron-shod share with a beam to draw it. Wheels were used in Saxon plows, and developments after 1600 led eventually to the steel plow of the U.S. engineer John Deere (1837), disk plows with revolving concave disks instead of shares and moldboards, and tractor-drawn plows that make multiple furrows.

See also: Deere, John.