Archive photographs, brochure pages, hand sketches, patent drawings and charts
from Helmut Weiste's book. Click a picture to enlarge it.
Origins & the triangle
The planting machine, the move to Soest and the triangular quick coupler – 1948 to 1965.
The book, published in 2013 by Landwirtschaftsverlag.The English edition.From Soest to the world.Helmut Weiste, Dipl.-Ing., Dipl.-Wirt.-Ing.Planting rice by hand – the work that Heinrich Weiste's planting machine made obsolete.Two planting machines front and rear on a crawler tractor: 2 m working width, eight narrow rows – Rice Research Institute, Vercelli.View from the Haarstrang ridge towards Soest. Oil painting by Schulze-Sölde, 1951.Storm on the Irish Sea, March 1963 – Helmut Weiste's first demonstration tour abroad.Sieningsen in the Soester Börde: the Weiste family farm and works.The “Weiste concrete crew”: 75 cubic metres of concrete in 7.5 hours, Soest 1963.A home-built screed trolley laid a concrete surface as smooth as a motorway.Three implements coupled into one large seedbed combination by means of the triangle.The ACCORD planting machine, 1963: cast gearwheels gave way to interchangeable plastic ones.Seedbed combination of cultivator harrows, harrows and crumbler rollers.Two Unimogs converted into concrete mixers – the drums came from old buoys of the Möhne reservoir.The triangle also defined the ACCORD logo.The ACCORD quick-hitch triangle – German patent no. 1,215,419.Coupling a front implement with a restricted field of view.Coupling a rear implement on an angled approach.Coupling three implements into one combination.Coupling with the implement steeply tilted sideways.The principle: implement triangle from U-section, tractor triangle from square tube.Cultivator with integrated implement triangle – from 1965 ACCORD built every implement this way.“The ACCORD Automatic system turns every tractor into a versatile implement carrier.”SIMA Paris 1965: the “circus act” on importer Cogeai's stand.Diploma thesis 1968: strength analysis of the tractor triangle. From left: Peter Renvert, Bernhard Mormann, Helmut Weiste.In front mounting the ACCORD coupling dominated: known in the trade as the “Weiste triangle”.Deutz Intrac – the system tractors of 1972 gave the quick hitch a new lease of life.INTRAC 2002, fitted front and rear with the ACCORD triangle coupling as standard.The Unidrive front linkage by Ferranti, England.Hako of Bad Oldesloe received the exclusive licence for the mini Weiste triangle.The Hakotrac Hydrostatic with a small tractor triangle front and rear.
The invention, 1965/66
How a corrugated tube became the pneumatic distribution system.
Hand sketch (1) from 1965: the corrugation in the delivery tube and the radial guide plate.Hand sketch (2): longitudinal guide plates to eliminate swirl in the flow.From British patent no. 1,176,201, “A device for distributing agricultural material”.Figures 3 and 4 of the 1967 combination patent.Figures 7 and 8: the corrugated-tube distributor – Helmut Weiste's invention of summer 1965.Before departure in Soest: Andreas Paulini (left) and Friedrich Maas (right).Plastic injection moulding for the PNEUMATIC system – begun in Ernst Ullmann's garage at Oestinghausen.The 1966 route to Moscow and the subsequent demonstration tour through the Balkans.Arrival at the exhibition grounds in Moscow, May 1966.The vehicle convoy on a country road in Belarus, May 1966.The imposing entrance to the largest exhibition hall in Moscow.The ACCORD stand in Moscow – erected in three days without the state-allocated cranes.The President of the USSR Chamber of Commerce presents Heinrich Weiste with the gold medal.Demonstration of the 10 m pneumatic seed drill at the Moscow fair.The ACCORD PNEUMATIC system: fan (1), metering unit (2), delivery line (3), corrugated tube (4), distributor (5), seed hoses (6), coulters (7).The air stream carries the grains: a look inside a pneumatic distributor.Demonstration on a collective farm near Ruse in northern Bulgaria.Closed cell-wheel metering: exact by volume, from oilseed rape to beans.The 10 m drill with 50 coulters and two tanks on the Unimog.The international field day of 4 October 1966: demonstration ring with marquee and covered stands.Impact spreaders below the lines distribute fertiliser or fine granules broadcast over the soil.The 15 m drill: two 7.5 m drill frames on a coupling bridge, two tanks on the front of the tractor.170 trade visitors from 17 countries came to the field day in the Soester Börde.The 10 m ridge fertiliser spreader places fertiliser between the cereal rows.1966 · PNEUMATIC prototype: 15 m seed drill.Printed specially for the field day: the variety of ACCORD PNEUMATIC prototypes.Norbert Kleine with a 5 m drill from the pilot series, 1967.Major demonstration near Orléans in 1967: more than ten prototypes arranged in a semicircle.1968 · PNEUMATIC-DS: 6 m tractor-mounted drill.Section through the 100 mm corrugated tube with distributor.The corrugated-tube distributor: the grain-air mixture (3) is turned upwards, and the corrugated tube (4) spreads the grains evenly across the outlets of the distributor (5).ACCORD – Helmut WeisteBroadcast sowing beneath a sweep: the air stream lays the seed straight onto the moist layer of soil.ACCORD – Helmut Weiste
Crisis & new beginning
The years after the first success: setbacks, competition and the second attempt.
The 10 m PNEUMATIC fertiliser spreader, first series 1968.Spring 1968: the PNEUMATIC spreader distributes rice 10 m wide over the water – Vercelli, Italy.The 12 m PNEUMATIC fertiliser spreader with slides for section control.British patent no. 1,205,724: the vertical injector sluice.Seed drill with the modifications for improved distribution, 1969.Allan Boyd, head of development, in the assembly hall at Connor Shea, Sunshine near Melbourne.The later Trailer Seeder: different seeding cultivators behind one tank trailer.“Wideline Seeder – puts air to work for you.”The Connor Shea Wideline Seeder, 1971 – the world's first air seeder.Intrac 2002 with a 5 m ACCORD PNEUMATIC drill and Hassia supply tank.The Cantone Supercultivator, Vercelli – Italy, 1970.Heinrich Weiste's system for large farms: every implement 10 m wide.The product life curves of the old and new ranges – the cause of the crisis in one picture.Moscow 1972: Leonid Brezhnev in front of the 6 m production drill on the ACCORD stand.The design of the DL seed drill: modular construction from seed cart and coulter rail.Helmut and Bärbel Weiste, 15 August 1975.The DL cell-wheel metering unit: rubber lip below, nylon brush above – no grain damage.The vertical injector sluice – optimum dimensions derived from many test series.The pneumatic distributor: from the corrugated tube the grains enter every outlet evenly.March 1976: the first 3.33 m DL prototype at work on the Beuckmann farm at Fahnen.Coefficient of variation: 6–10 % with primary and secondary distributors, only 2–5 % with the vertical injector sluice.The first series of 200 DL drills sold out in the summer of 1977.The DL seed drills in 3 m, 3.33 m and 4 m working widths.1977 · PNEUMATIC-DL: 4 m modular drill.“ACCORD PNEUMATIC – the optimum seeding principle.”The John Deere air seeder prototype at work in western Kansas, September 1977.The Info-agrar Justus – the first user of the ACCORD PNEUMATIC system in Germany.Layout and function of the Justus: loosening shares, tine rotor, packer roller, seeding unit.Terry Friggstad's farm near Frontier, Saskatchewan.Above the prairie of Saskatchewan – Terry Friggstad let Helmut Weiste take the controls.1979 · Friggstad, Canada: 14.6 m air seeder.The 8 m DT seed drill, mainly for large farms in France.The DT seed drill: two DL tanks with two coulter frames in tandem.The 48-foot Friggstad air seeder with ACCORD PNEUMATIC components, May 1979.The characteristic grain elevators of the Canadian prairie.“HONEY BEE” – 600 hp, built during the winter months from Caterpillar parts.Cultivating, seeding and fertilising in one pass – working time and energy demand drop by more than 60 %.Implement & Tractor, November 1980: “Rounding up the hot new product from Australia – air seeders”.Wind erosion: several hundred tonnes of topsoil per hectare end up in the roadside ditch.Testing a 6 m DT drill on the Bethge farm in Manitoba, May 1981.Terry Friggstad (left) in front of his seed cart, talking to Flexi-Coil engineers.
The 1980s
Seed drill combinations, precision seeding and the road to North America.
The DA piggy-back seed drill, 1982: the seed hopper sits above the power harrow.1982 · PNEUMATIC-DA: 3 m cultivator-mounted drill.The Vicon Octopus air seeder – an early platform strategy.After four years more DA drills were sold than DL drills.The saddle triangle allowed the DA to be mounted on power harrows of any make.1982 · Horsch: 3 m Sä-Exaktor broadcasting seeds.1983: the prototype of the Horsch 12 m trailed seed drill with 96 coulters.The Horsch Sä-Exaktor: a DL seed hopper on a rotary tiller, broadcasting onto the tilled horizon.The comparison in the field: non-plough broadcast sowing (left) against conventional drilling.The DF-1 front-tank seed drill, 1986: split design to avoid soil compaction.With the front tank the farmer could assemble his seeding combination freely.1986 · PNEUMATIC-DF-1: 4 m front-hopper drill.The “ACCORD parade”: seeding combinations on their way to the demonstration field.The DC combination drill, 1987: 600 l fertiliser on the left, 500 l seed on the right – developed for the barley of Scotland's whisky distilleries.Tramlines in the standing crop – created at sowing, used for fertilising and spraying.Tramline rhythms: which coulters have to be shut off.1989 · PNEUMATIC-DF-2: 6 m front-hopper drill.The FGS electronic control box of 1980, developed by Ferdinand Schumacher senior.Distributor with solenoid flaps in two seed hoses – tramlines in a 3-pass rhythm.The band coulter spreads the grains in a 7 cm wide band in the soil.The coulters on a single rail: free to follow the soil profile.Full broadcast sowing with tramlines – loess soil in the Soester Börde.The single-disc coulter of 1986 – a narrow seed furrow instead of a wide rolling-coulter furrow.The TURBO fertiliser spreader: 18 m spreading width with only 15 m of booms.The EMR electronic rate control, 1988.Two 18 m TURBO spreaders behind Unimogs on a large farm in Schleswig-Holstein.Eighteen MINIAIR seeding rows on a home-built frame – carrot sowing near Bakersfield.The “seeding heart” – the singulating unit of the pneumatic precision drill.The Salinas Valley in California: in season 1,000 lorries a day leave the loading centre.Arno and Mira Weiste, aged five and six, on the rubble heap of the newly acquired site, 1983.The dip-painting line of 1984 – it caught fire in February 1985.The works site on Coesterweg in Soest.The new assembly hall of 1986: no conveyor line, but machines on small trolleys.With the triangle coupling one forklift driver could load a semi-trailer in a quarter of an hour.From left: Walter Born, Heinrich Gugenhan, Helmut Weiste – the takeover of Fähse.Lippetaler Kunststoff-Technik at Oestinghausen – taken over by ACCORD in 1989.By the end of the 1980s LKT supplied more than 400 different plastic parts to ACCORD.Market shares in Germany, Great Britain and France.Turnover by product group 1980–1989: from 10 to 50 million DM.The DA piggy-back seed drill at work: the seed hopper sits above the power harrow.ACCORD – Helmut Weiste
Market leader
Air seeders, wide-area technology and licensees around the world.
Air Seeding '90 in Regina: thirteen manufacturers demonstrated their air seeders in the field.The international symposium of the University of Saskatchewan, June 1990.1988 · Flexi-Coil, Canada: 17.8 m air seeder.The ESC electronic seed drill control, 1990 – inform, monitor, control.The CX coulter: a convex steel disc and a flexible plastic disc with offset axes.The “roundabout”: a rotating soil trough in which clogging could be simulated.The slim version of the CX coulter permits row spacings from 9.5 cm.The DV variable seed drill, 1995: 5 to 8 m, folding up compactly.1995 · PNEUMATIC-DV: 8 m variable drill.1992 · Väderstad, Sweden: 6 m Rapid.The 8 m Väderstad Concorde with two ACCORD distribution systems, 1990.Transverse distribution with a flat elbow: CV 2.3 % – rated “good” by DLG standards.Transverse distribution with a round elbow: CV 7.2 %.The star-wheel coulter: two star-shaped discs on inclined axes.The Tinto Industries Super-Nova, Zimbabwe – direct drilling through heavy straw residues.Soya crop on Hinton Estate Farm, Zimbabwe, March 1992.1995 · John Deere: 3 m 750 A No-Till.The John Deere 740 A mulch drill, 8 m with 52 double-disc coulters.The John Deere 750 A No-Till with ACCORD PNEUMATIC seed tank, in Europe from 1995.MONOPILL-S in mulch seeding: the wheel ahead of the coulter is replaced by a double cutting disc.A twelve-row MONOPILL-S sowing sugar beet.The MONOPILL seeding heart with lateral internal filling – a seed disc with only four cells.A 6 m MINIAIR-S with fifteen twin rows sows three beds at once.The MINIAIR-S seeding heart: for the first time untreated fine seeds could be singulated precisely.Carrots from precision single-seed sowing – uniform in size and ripeness.The OPTIMA – pneumatic precision drill for large seeds.The OPTIMA seeding heart without a seal: no friction, no wear, low drive torque.OPTIMA sowing maize – narrow rows gave 5 to 10 % higher yields.The ACCORD training centre, opened in October 1990.The company magazine – bilingual as ACCORD REPORT from 1994.The high-bay warehouse of 1991: 2,450 pallet spaces, chaotic storage, computer-controlled.The Soest works in 1997: some 38,000 square metres along Coesterweg.Factory representatives and agents: the sales network after German reunification.The OPTIMA-L: 6 m wide and light enough for the 80 hp tractors available in Ukraine.The sales territory: from Ukraine to western Siberia and Kazakhstan.Peter Penner (left) with Mr Balabanik in front of the DT drill delivered in 1984.Demonstration with a DT seed drill in the Lipetsk region, 1995.Ferrag at the Royal Show – in Britain ACCORD reached a 46 % market share.The golden ACCORD pin of honour for George Randles, Warrington, 18 October 1994.A symbolic handshake to confirm the cooperation.Compiègne, 24 June 1992: the German-French cooperation agreement with Sulky is signed.“Welcome HONDA – ACCORD”: Honda had asked for confirmation of the name for its car model.The boards of Kubota and the LAV, Tsukuba, 15 March 1994.1996: the new company name above the entrance to the administration building.The Coesterweg works in 1993, with the training centre.22 April 1998, Würzburg Residence: the Tilo Freiherr von Wilmowsky medal in gold.The anniversary brochure “50 Years of ACCORD”, designed by Bärbel Weiste, in four languages.Fifty years of ACCORD – pioneer of agricultural engineering, Soest town hall, 15 May 1998.Domestic and export turnover 1990–1999: a peak of 74 million DM in 1997, export share 55 %.From three to sixteen competitors with pneumatic seed drills between 1993 and 1999.
2000 to 2012
Kverneland Accord, the last developments and the retrospect.
The 2012 cathodic dip-painting line: automotive-grade corrosion protection.The MSC seeding combination: cultivation, sowing and fertilising in a single pass.2009 · PNEUMATIC-TS-EVO: 6 m tine seeder.2006 · PNEUMATIC-MSC: 6 m mulch seeding combination.The i-drill PRO: hopper and metering sit directly on the power harrow.2009 · PNEUMATIC-DG: 12 m CX-Ultra drill.The CX-Ultra coulter for the large trailed seed drills.The FlexCart seed cart, 2012 – the design dated from 2003.MONOPILL-SE: every seeding row is driven by its own 12 V motor.OPTIMA-HD on the trailed TF-Profi sowing maize.The IsoMatch Tellus ISOBUS terminal – two displays in one unit.GEOseed: maize in a triangular pattern – mechanical weeding along and across the rows.The share of pneumatic seed drills in Europe rose from 30 % (2000) to 50 % (2012).“The visions we had back then are reality today.”Pneumatic seeding today: a seeding combination in the evening light.The DG-12000: 12 m working width, a 6,000-litre tank, up to 140 hectares a day.Kverneland Group / ACCORD – Helmut Weiste
