ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the processes of mechanisation and motorisation from the middle of the 19th century to the 1960s by emphasizing the different potentials and limitations of mineral and biotic resources. It was basically this different resource basis in industry and agriculture which led to such notable differences between the patterns of mechanisation and motorisation in industry and agriculture and not, as historians have tended to argue, the assumed conservative character of the peasants, their sentimental and irrational veneration for the horse, their apparent dislike for technological innovations and their quasi-Luddite tendencies against progress. Since technological choices are always accompanied by contingencies, uncertainties and unintended consequences, farmers carefully reflected on the practical use of new inventions in order to minimise the high technology-induced risks. An implementation of new technology in agricultural practice, therefore, depended on many more aspects than the availability and transfer capacities of technology from the factory or the workshop to the farm.
