Fyodor Abramovich Blinov is a famous self-taught inventor from Russia. He was born in the village of Nikolsky (Saratov province) in 1827. The boy's parents were serfs. After receiving the "free" Fedor mastered several professions. He worked as a barge hauler, a stoker and even a machinist on a ship. In the entire Volga shipping company, he was considered the best mechanic.
First Invention
In 1877 Fyodor Abramovich Blinov returned to his native village. The mechanic decided to devote himself entirely to creative activity. His first invention was a railroad car with a frame and body made of wood. Fedor attached two carts on springs to the bottom of the frame. Together with the axles of the four support wheels, they turned in a horizontal plane. Well, the designer gave a very interesting name to the closed iron tapes, consisting of separate links - “Endless tapes”. Blinov built a swivel drawbar designed for a horse team into the front of the support frame. The resulting device contained all the constituent elements of a modern caterpillar. The use of caterpillars instead of conventional wheels increased the performance and efficiency of horse-drawn transport many times over. This was of particular importance in the conditions of seasonal mud and impassability.
Fire pump
To finance his inventions, Blinov is working to improve and repair agricultural machinery, creating new designs for various machines. In particular, Fedor came up with a single-cylinder fire pump. It was much more reliable and more productive than the then two-cylinder.
Tractor prototype
Fyodor Abramovich Blinov was so inspired by the success of the caterpillar trailer that he soon came up with the idea of building a self-propelled wagon that would run on a steam engine. In 1881, the inventor moved to the city of Balakovo, not far from Volsk. There he opened an iron foundry. The first products of the enterprise were fire pumps. They were in high demand.
Also, the hero of this article organized repair shops on the territory. It was there that Fedor Abramovich Blinov began the construction of his "self-propelled gun". The caterpillar tractor was created exactly seven years later, in 1888. It looked like this: on a rectangular frame, which consisted of several transverse and two longitudinal beams, there was a boiler (maximum pressure 6 atmospheres) with a diameter of 1.2 meters and a height of 1.5 meters. Two steam engines acted as power plants. The power of eachwas 12 liters. with. The drive wheels of the caterpillar chain were driven by engines using cast iron gears. Well, it was possible to control the tractor from a booth installed on the frame, where Blinov brought the control levers of steam engines. It is worth noting that the traction force of the self-propelled gun was 1200 kilograms. This ensured the operation of several plows at once. And the maximum possible speed of the unit reached the mark of 3.2 km / h.
Improvement of self-propelled vehicle
Fyodor Abramovich Blinov actively demonstrated his caterpillar tractor at Russian industrial exhibitions. In 1889, the inventor showed it in action at the Saratov agricultural exhibition. In 1894, Blinov decided to improve the next model of his "self-propelled gun". Due to the front drive, he moved the control levers of the onboard clutches directly to the cockpit. The driver sitting behind the boiler could only brake the rear wheels and play the role of a stoker. Also, the hero of this article replaced two steam engines with one two-cylinder engine with a common shaft.
Four-stroke engine
Blinov Fedor Abramovich, whose biography is in many engineering encyclopedias, had high hopes for his son Porfiry. The young man received an engineering education and was going to continue his father's work. But Porfiry believed that mass production of caterpillar tractors could not be established only on their own. Meanwhile, Fedor Abramovich beganbuild a prototype oil engine. He hoped to put it on a caterpillar tractor. The inventor thought for a long time about how to burn oil, because it was a very difficult fuel to ignite.
There is a belief that the idea of solving this problem came to Blinov's mind during the service. Seeing the censer waved by the priest, Fyodor Abramovich realized that the external, red-hot calorifer could simply be replaced with hot coals. He could not wait for the end of the prayer service and quietly left the church. Thus, another invention of Blinov was created - the igniter.
Thus, a new type of four-stroke internal combustion engine was born, running solely on crude oil. But Fedor Abramovich Blinov, whose brief biography was presented above, did not manage to put it on his caterpillar tractor. The inventor died in 1902, just one month before his 71st birthday.
Memory
About what Fyodor Abramovich Blinov is known for, people learned only in the middle of the twentieth century. It was at that time that the book "Russia - the birthplace of the tractor" written by L. Davydov was published. In the same period, the first articles about the life and work of the inventor appeared in the Socialist Labor publication. Their authors wrote that the house in which Blinov lived, as well as his grave, was preserved in Balakovo. But no one sought to perpetuate the memory of the great self-taught inventor. Although one street of the residential town was still given his last name. Now she has practically disappeared, lost amonghigh-rise buildings.
In 1983, exactly one hundred years have passed since the founding of the first machine-building company in Balakovo. In honor of this event, thanks to the activity of the famous local historian A. A. Derevyanchenko, a memorial plaque was installed on the house where the inventor lived.
Also, Anatoly Alexandrovich, in collaboration with A. Chulkov, wrote the book "Volga Nugget". The publication dedicated to Blinov was published in 1990 in Saratov. And Derevyanchenko was busy with the restoration of the grave of Fedor Abramovich and the establishment of a monument on it. In 1991, the local historian opened a special account with Promstroybank and asked the public to donate money to a good cause. But the Balakovo people were engaged at that time in another "good deed": they were raising funds for the installation of a monument to Lenin, thrown down from a pedestal in the city of Nesterov (Western Ukraine). I must say that the monument to the Russian revolutionary was put in place literally a month after the start of fundraising.
