A rotary tiller, also known as arototiller,rotavator,rotary hoe,power tiller, orrotary plough (in US: plow), is a motorisedcultivator that works the soil by means of rotating tines or blades. Rotary tillers are either self propelled or drawn as an attachment behind either atwo-wheel tractor or four-wheel tractor. For two-wheel tractors they are rigidly fixed and powered via couplings to the tractors' transmission. For four-wheel tractors they are attached by means of a three-point hitch and driven by a Power Take-Off (PTO).The powered rotary hoe was invented by Arthur Clifford Howard who, in 1912, began experimenting with rotary tillage on his father's farm at Gilgandra, New South Wales, Australia. Initially using his father's steam tractor engine as a power source, he found that ground could be mechanically tilled without soil-packing occurring, as was the case with normal ploughing. His earliest designs threw the tilled soil sideways, until he improved his invention by designing an L-shaped blade mounted on widely spaced flanges fixed to a small-diameter rotor.
