History of the horse in Britain drawn by two horses, the "Dutch plough", was used in eastern England; this was followed in 1730 by the lightweight Rotherham plough, an unwheeled, or "swing" plough. It was advertised as reducing ploughing times by a third, or using a third less horsepower for the same ploughing time. The improved seed drill and horse-hoe were invented by Jethro Tull in 1731; but it took more than 100 years for these designs to come into common use. The earliest horse-powered threshing machines, which were installed permanently in barns, were developed towards the end of the 18th century. The use of fast
Seed drill to plant seeds by hand. Besides being wasteful, planting was usually imprecise and led to a poor distribution of seeds, leading to low productivity. The use of a seed drill can improve the ratio of crop yield (seeds harvested per seed planted) by as much as nine times. Some machines for metering out seeds for planting are called planters. The concepts evolved from ancient Chinese practice and later evolved into mechanisms that pick up seeds from a bin and deposit them down a tube. Seed drills of earlier centuries included single-tube seed drills in Sumer and multi-tube seed drills in