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> Factories used to have bands and axels taking power from one central steam engine to all corners of the building.

From my own experience: a popular home woodworker tool from the middle of the 20th century is a Shop Smith. It had a motor that you would couple to the various mounted attachments to run the lathe or the band saw or the table saw etc one tool at a time. I guess part of the appeal was certainly the size savings, but I have to think it was also only having to buy one electric motor. Life changingly good motors are now commodity parts, and artisanally crafted ones are setting acceleration world records. Cool time to be alive.

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Tractors, still widely used today, as essentially a mobile version of this.

One of the main purposes of a tractor, compared to other farm vehicles, is that it has a power take-off [0] to enable the engine to drive other farm implements like combines.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_take-off

I've never actually thought about what a tractor actually is. I've seen them in use and could roughly describe one but its actual purpose or intent was unknown to me until now.

Easily one of the most dangerous bit of farm equipment. I’ve seen several people killed by getting their hand/arm in a PTO shaft.

You might be the only person on the planet who's witnessed several of those, if you mean first-hand.

They're still incredibly dangerous. Even with all the safety guards you've got 50-300hp being directed to a free-space shaft.

When we got a mower we went with a flail mower because we'd be mowing near neighbors and a bush hog(giant lawnmower blade style mower) will happily pick up a rock and send it with enough force to easily kill someone at a good distance. Flails tend to throw less things(which is why highway maintenance use them for mowing along the road).

Early tractor PTOs where especially, um, fun. No built-in overrunning clutch and no "live" PTO means the inertia of spinning implements could turn the PTO, and thus the drive wheels. Nothing like standing on the brakes while the tractor just...keeps going for a few feet.

Fortunately overrunning clutch attachments are cheap to add.

I'm a paramedic in a rural area. I didn't witness the initial events, only the aftermath.

that's actually a great point! In all of those cases the weight and breakdownability of having another motor in the tool attached to the tractor seems like a real hassle compared to a PTO.

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