Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (5.1984/1987)

FRANTISEK SACH’S CONTRIBUTION
TOWARDS RESEARCH ON
PRE-INDUSTRIAL TILLING
IMPLEMENTS IN AUSTRIA

By
H. C. Dosedla

Introduction
It is no accident that the first issue of Tools
and Tillage in 1968 started with a proposal
for the classification of pre-industrial tilling
implements, by the late expert Dr. Frantisek
Sach from the Agricultural Museum of
Prague (Sach 1968, 3-27).
In the years since then, numerous scholars
have tried in one way or another to make use
of this particular classification system. Be-
cause of its obvious logic and accuracy, the
system was adopted when it was printed
(Sach 1966) for the national research pro-
gramme of the Osterreichischer Volkskunde
Atlas (OVA 1959-81, Ethnographical Atlas
of Austria) (Dosedla 1977).
The present author owed a great deal to
Dr. Sach’s practical and wise advise, and this
contribution is intended as a mark of respect
for his pioneering work in the methodology
of plough classification.
Typological and terminological advantage's of
Sack's system
It was characteristic of attempts towards a
global typology of pre-industrial tilling im-
plements before Sach’s work that they were
based on a rather formal, not to say aesthetic
point of view1, neither of which are accept-
able in the light of agrotechnically correct

standards. Practically minded agricultural
professionals like Professor Steensberg
(Steensberg 1966) and F. Sach insisted on a
strictly functional standpoint as a basis for
an internationally useful, uniform termino-
logy, to aid the interdisciplinary study of
this aspect of social and cultural anthropol-
ogy. Thus, Sach hesitated to follow the ex-
ample of the well-established industrial and
technological standards of the so-called DIN
(Deutsche Industrie-Norm) system.2 Conse-
quently his principle was not only to em-
phasise the two distinctive main kinds of til-
lage by either longwise symmetrical or long-
wise asymmetrical implements, including
their most common variations, but also to
consider the two way process of the adapta-
tion of specific methods of work and utilisa-
tion and development of implements in the
light of local ecological conditions (Sach
1968,4) (plate I, fig. 1-5).
The typological questions that stood next
in importance for Sach were the possible
kinds of draught equipment, and the meth-
ods of regulating the depth of tillage, and the
width of furrow, for any implement.
According to the standards employed, the
desired uniformity of any constructional or
otherwise technical drawings should be
managed by adjusting them in the literal