Britain Unlimited covers 250 Great British people and what made them famous

Who was He? Agricultural Engineer and agrarian revolutionary. Date and Place of Birth: 30th March 1674, Basildon, Berkshire, England. Family Background: Son of Jethro and Dorothy Tull who came from the Oxfordshire/Berkshire border. Education: St. John's College, Oxford. Grays Inn, London. Trained for a legal career but a lack of family funds meant he had to go back to farming. Chronology: 1699: Begins farming the family land. 1701: He invented the seed drill, at Howberry farm, Crowmarsh, near Wallingford, Oxfordshire, which was a mechanical device towed by a horse which not only made sowing seeds easier than by hand but which was more efficient in their spreading. His major advance in the technique was the introduction of sowing seeds in three rows simultaneously. He was determined to make agricultural methods easier whilst at the same time increasing yields. His original seed drill was manufactured from pieces of an old pipe organ that he had dismantled. 1709: Moves to a farm near Hungerford where he devised a horse-drawn hoe to clear the weeds which were growing on cultivated land. 1731: Published his ideas about farming and plant nutrition in "The New Horse Hoing Husbandry: subtitled, "An Essay on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation". His controversial idea was on how plants take up water and he suggested that if the soil was loosened around the roots they would more easily be able to make use of any water. Despite a lot of resistance to his ideas, they were eventually adopted by landowners, and were later to from the basis of modern agriculture. Written Works: 1733: “Horse Hoing Husbandry”. Marriage: Unknown Places of Interest: BERKSHIRE: Hungerford Date and Place of Death: 21st February 1741, Prosperous Farm, near Hungerford, Berkshire, England. Age at Death: 67. Site of Grave: Hungerford, Berkshire, England.