“Ahaz begat Jaera; Jaera begat Alemeph, Azmaveth and Zambri; Zamri gave birth to Motsu."
First Chronicles 9:42
What happened before the very first tanks? If you take the book by O. Drozhzhin "Land Cruisers" (1942), then, no doubt, you will notice how much frank fiction is in it - conversations of people whom no one has heard in reality and which are just … a retelling of dry lines of reports and documents. Moreover, the book itself is very talented, and it is interesting to read it. However, since it was still designed for children, studying the history of armored vehicles using it is the same as trying to become a detective, reading about the adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
But she showed an example. And then it happened in 1949, in the USSR a struggle for priorities and against cosmopolitanism began and … a lot of works very similar to Drozhzhin's book appeared, where everything was just as simple and understandable as what was needed. Many generations of our citizens have used these very books. And they use it even today. Otherwise, where did the statements of VO commentators come from that it was in Russia that the first steam engine, the first tractor, and the first tank were invented?
In fact, it was not at all like that.
That's how?
This will be discussed now.
How it really was
Let's start with the fact that the prototype of the caterpillar propeller was first proposed in France in 1713 by a certain d'Erman, and even received a positive response from the French academy. Although this was exactly the prototype - rollers under the bottom of the carriage for transporting goods, connected to each other by means of hinges.
Therefore, the year of creation, more or less similar to the modern tracked propulsion unit, can be considered 1818. It was then that the Frenchman Dubochet was granted the privilege of a crew with movable rail tracks. However, this is one privilege - “paper will endure everything,” but how will it be in metal?
And in metal, the first tracked machine to be built and tested was a steam tractor designed by the Englishman John Gitcot, who in 1832 received a patent for a machine "for draining and mining swampy lands too viscous to be cultivated with horses and cattle." The caterpillars on the Gikota tractor had two large wheels, the rotation of which they rolled over.
And here is what people who saw it at work wrote about Gitkot's car:
"Over the past two years, we ourselves have repeatedly seen how this machine worked in the so-called Red Marsh near the city of Bolton (Lancashire), and could fully appreciate the results it gives."
The Frenchman Dominique Cabarius (1836) also worked on the caterpillar drive, writing:
“Not far from Bordeaux, in my deliberately chosen extremely sandy area, I was carrying 800 pounds of cargo with my own hands on a two-wheeled wheelbarrow, and the movable rails that I used were of simple wood … I am sure that if they were made of metal, I could carry 1200 pounds."
And here's what he wrote about the future of tracked vehicles:
“Would it be absurd to think that a carriage carrying a railroad track and driven by the power of steam would not be able to render great services to science in the exploration of deserts where there is no other road than seas of quicksand?
Can't we hope that with the help of such a crew it will be possible to successfully complete the search for a passage in the northwest of America?
And if the snows that cover the north of Europe, hiding all the paths, seemingly seek to impede any movement, then does it not seem advisable to try to overcome this obstacle with the help of movable rail tracks?"
Later, namely in 1857, the Englishman William Newton received a patent for "an improved device of movable rails for towing steam engines for movement on ordinary roads and without roads at all." Simultaneously with him, they are working on a caterpillar drive: Fowler, Burton (1858), Rikkat and others.
In all the books on the history of armored vehicles, there is one amusing drawing: something like "a long wagon wriggling on the ground, with a smoking chimney." This is an image of a tracked armored train designed by the Frenchman Edouard Buyen, who proposed this "device" in 1874. Apparently, he attached great importance to his brainchild, since he wrote:
"Put an armored battery on my wagon and you have the most formidable weapon of war ever made."
Unfortunately, in none of the books I have come across detailed drawings of this "train". Only a side view and sectional view of his carriage, and going to the French patent office is both troublesome and, most likely, not cheap.
In the description, Buyen's "land armored train" consisted of wagons protected by armor and with cannons firing through the embrasures. Weight - 120 tons, speed - 10 km / h. Armament: 12 cannons and four mitrailleuses. Crew: 200 people. And Buyen managed to get a patent for his brainchild. It's just that it was never built.
So by the 80s of the 19th century, the idea of a caterpillar propeller had ceased to be exotic, but found its embodiment in metal.
For example, the American Better patented a tracked tractor in 1888, and then they even began to produce and use it, albeit to a limited extent, in US agriculture.
That is, the question of superiority does not seem to arise now?
Or does it arise?
Because even today on the web you can see a picture with the text of the following content:
"The world's first crawler tractor was built and tested in 1888 by the Russian inventor F. A. Blinov, who received a patent for a caterpillar track in 1879".
That is, even if this machine was actually built, then … its novelty took place only in Russia and does not pull at the world level. Although, yes: in the Soviet pantheon of Russian "white elephants" he took the same place of honor as the plane of Mozhaisky, the Cherepanovs' steam locomotive, Artamonov's bicycle or the balloon of the clerk Kryakutny, "inflated with stinking and filthy smoke."
However, what about the patent for the "tracked vehicle" of Captain Zagryazhsky in 1837, the patent of 1839 for the tracked drive of the Russian Vasily Terter and the privilege of 1876 by Stephen Mayevsky, issued for "a steam locomotive capable of moving on ordinary roads"?
Most likely, the point here was that the Soviet agitators found it tempting from the political prophet of his "national origin": after all, there were peasants, but he invented a caterpillar tractor!
Was there a boy?
But here's the fun part.
Firstly, Blinov never received a patent for his tractor, and did not even try to do it. Here you need to understand that at that time the patent and privilege, as documents, were very different.
And secondly, this car … is not mentioned in any pre-revolutionary source.
Then how do we know about her?
And here's where: from the brochure of L. D. Davydov "Fyodor Abramovich Blinov - the creator of the world's first tractor", published in the same memorable 1949. After that, articles about the "peasant nugget" poured out, as if from a cornucopia.
It is believed that it was exhibited at the Saratov Zemstvo Fair in 1889 and in 1895 in Nizhny Novgorod at the All-Russian Trade and Industrial Fair. But for some reason, none of the local newspapers even briefly mentioned him? Although that would be such news. Here are the priorities of everything Russian, and they loved to write about this even under the tsar, and news, but what journalist would miss such news? But … not a single line about him! But no, that's all!
Moreover, the "invisible tractor" never got into the lenses of cameras, although after the same Nizhny Novgorod fair hundreds of photographs have survived, where there are views of it, and pavilions and even some of its exhibits. For example, it was there in Nizhny Novgorod in 1896 that photographs of the first Russian car Yakovlev-Frese were taken. But "Blinov's tractor" did not receive such an honor. As there in Gorky Klim Samghin: "Maybe the boy was not there?"
Although … I will not at all mind if any of the readers of VO, living in Nizhny Novgorod, rummages in the local state archive, reads newspapers of those years and finds materials proving that "Blinov's tractor" really was and is not an invention of Stalinist propagandists. All you have to do is find newspapers and documents from the above-named exhibition and look through them carefully!
Well, and about what our global and, in addition, imperial priority can really be seen, as well as about the first projects of tanks at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, we will tell in one of the following materials.
