Today the years glide by like pleasant pictures. We are fed, busy and
happy. We almost let the dead bury their dead today while the living
drive forward their tasks, achieving as much in a year as the old ages
did in twenty. We have learned to feed ourselves and the food fills our
bodies and brains with energy which must find expression in useful
accomplishment. “Blessed is he who has found his work to do,” we say
nowadays, “but thrice blessed is he who has found a machine to do it for
him.”
Thread your way back through history to the time when the slender lives
of men expanded into full and useful employment, and you will find that,
so far as raising the world’s food is concerned, it all began with the
invention of the reaper in only the last century. It is interesting to
know something of the precarious entry of this machine and something of
the dark background from which it emerged.
[Illustration: THE SCYTHE IS A DEVELOPMENT OF THE REAPING HOOK
The blade was made larger and the handle longer so two hands could be
used.]
The Reaping Hook or Sickle.
From the first pages of history we find that the reaping hook or sickle
is the earliest tool for harvesting grain of which we have record.
Pliny, in describing the practice of reaping wheat says, “One method is
by means of reaping hooks, by which the straws are cut off in the middle
with sickles and the heads detached by a pair of shears.” Primitive
sickles or reaping hooks made of flint or bronze are found among the
remains left by the older nations. Pictures made in 1400 or 1500 B. C.
upon the tombs at Thebes in Egypt, which are still legible, show slaves
reaping with sickles. This crude tool, brought into use by ancient
Egypt, remained almost stationary as to form and method of use until the
middle of the last century.
The scythe, which is a development from the sickle, enables the operator
to use both hands instead of one. The scythe is still a familiar tool on
our farms, but it serves other purposes than that of being the sole
means of harvesting grain.
[Illustration: THE CRADLE WAS DEVELOPED IN AMERICA BETWEEN 1776 AND 1800
AND IS AN OUTGROWTH OF THE SCYTHE. IT IS STILL USED IN SOME PLACES]
The Cradle.
Gradually the blade of the scythe was made lighter, the handle was
lengthened, and fingers added to collect the grain and carry it to the
end of the stroke. With the cradle the cut swath could be laid down
neatly for drying preparatory to being bound into bundles. This tool is
distinctly an American development. The colonists, when they settled in
this country, probably brought with them all the European types of
sickles and scythes, and out of them evolved the cradle.
With the cradle in heavy grain an experienced man could cut about two
acres a day, and another man could rake and bind it into sheaves, so
that two men with the cradle could do the work of six or seven men with
sickles.
The American cradle stands at the head of all hand tools devised for the
harvesting of grain. When it was once perfected, it soon spread to all
countries with very little change in form. Although it has been
displaced almost entirely by the modern reaper, yet there are places in
this country and abroad where conditions are such that reaping machines
are impractical and where the cradle still has work to do.
[Illustration: HARVESTING IN THE WEST
_Reproduced by permission of the Philadelphia Museums._]
[Illustration: STEAM HARVESTER AND THRESHER
The upper view shows side-hill harvesters drawn by teams of twenty-eight
horses each. The machines cut the grain, and tie it up in bundles, which
are dropped alongside. The machine in the lower view is self-propelling,
cuts and threshes the grain, throwing out the straw, and places the
grain in sacks ready for loading on the wagon.
_Reproduced by permission of the Philadelphia Museums._]
Early Attempts to Harvest with Machines.
The beginning of practical efforts in the direction of harvesting by
wholly mechanical means may be said to date from the beginning of the
last century, about the year 1800, although very little progress was
made from that time up to the year 1831.
It is true that the Gauls made use of an instrument nearly two thousand
years before, but this contrivance fell into disuse with the decline of
the Gallic fields. Pliny describes this machine which was used early in
the first century and which might be termed a stripping header.
Palladius, four centuries later, describes the same sort of machine.
This device of the Gauls had lance-shaped knives, or teeth with
sharpened sides, projecting from a bar, like guard teeth, but set close
together to form a sort of comb. As it was pushed forward, the stalks
next the heads came between these sharp teeth and were cut or stripped
off into a box attached to and behind the cutter bar and carried by two
wheels. When the box was filled with heads, the machine was driven in
and emptied. This is the way in which it is supposed that it was worked,
and the illustration is the generally accepted representation of it as
roughly reconstructed from the old Latin description of Pliny.
[Illustration: THE MOWING MACHINE HAS REPLACED THE SCYTHE FOR CUTTING
HAY, AND THE KEROSENE TRACTOR HAS REPLACED EXPENSIVE HORSE POWER FOR
PULLING THE MOWERS
The tractor has 10 H. P. on the drawbar and is pulling three mowers,
laying down a swath of hay 21 feet wide.]
Near the close of the past century, the subject of grain-reaping
machines again began to claim the attention of inventors. In July, 1799,
the first English patent was granted to Joseph Boyce. In 1806, Gladstone
of England built and patented a machine which not only attempted to cut
the grain, but also to deliver it in gavels to be bound. In 1807,
Plucknett and Salmon both patented machines. In 1811, Smith and Kerr
took out patents. In 1822, Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster of Rennington,
assisted by Thomas and Joseph Brown, invented the so-called Ogle reaper.
The next, and last, reaper of this period was invented by Patrick Bell
of Carmyllie, Scotland, in 1826.
Nearly all of these early reapers relied upon scythes or cutters with a
rotary motion or vibrating shears. This method of cutting was
essentially wrong, and none of the machines ever appeared to have gained
or long retained the favor of the farmers. That these early attempts
were all unsuccessful is evidenced by the fact that at the great World’s
Fair in London in 1851, the United Kingdom could not present a single
reaping machine. English journals and writers of that period, without a
single exception, spoke of the American reapers which were exhibited as
“completely successful.” For the real progress towards solving the
problem of harvesting grain with machines we must turn to America.
[Illustration: THE MCCORMICK REAPER OF 1845]
American invention in this line, so far as there is any record, began
with the patent issued to Richard French and T. J. Hawkins of New
Jersey, May 17, 1803. No reliable description of this machine seems to
be extant. Five patents of no importance were issued between that time
and 1822, when Bailey took out a patent. Cope and Cooper of Pennsylvania
obtained a patent in 1826, and Manning obtained one in 1831.
[Illustration: A CORN BINDER CUTS THE HEAVIEST CORN WITH EASE]
Up to 1831, no successful and practical reaper had been developed. With
all the patents taken out in England, and with those taken out in
America from 1803 down to 1831, we might say that nothing had been
accomplished toward perfecting a reaping machine which actually worked
successfully.
[Illustration: A VIEW OF THE FIRST MCCORMICK REAPER OF 1831 AS USED IN
THE FIELD]
The First Successful Reaper.
[Illustration: THE MCCORMICK REAPER OF 1845 IN THE FIELD, WITH A SEAT
ADDED FOR THE RAKER