Reaper (machine)

“ Early English Machines—Machine of Patrick Bell—The Hussey Reaper—McCormick’s Reaper and Its Great Success—Rivalry Between the Two American Reapers—Self Rakers—Automatic Binders—Combined Steam Reaper and Threshing Machine—Great Wheat Fields of the West—Statistics.
In the harvest scenes upon the tombs of ancient Thebes the thirsty reaper is depicted, with curved sickle in hand, alternately bending his back to the grain and refreshing himself at the skin bottle. For more than thirty centuries did man thus continue to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow. ”

“ No Reaping Machine Without Hussey Principle
Many alleged improvements have been made in the Reaper in the past ten or twelve years; and many more still within half that period. How far they are new inventions, and actual improvements, we can better judge by examining Hussey's patent; for it describes the cutting apparatus clearly and minutely, and which in fact is the whole thing,—the "one thing needful" to success. For the use of wheels, or a system of gearing to all kinds of motive machinery is coeval with the first dawn of mechanical science. ”

“ On this machine a reel pressed the grain against the cutters and made it fall back on an apron. The apron could be set to run in either direction to deposit the cut grain at the side, out of the way of the machine on the next trip around. The reaper was invented by the Reverend Patrick Bell, Carmyllie, Scotland. The model was constructed by Office of Exhibits, Smithsonian Institution. ”

“ This is a marvellous development from the little Virginia shop of 1840, with its output of one machine a week, and the growth means far more for the country at large than might be inferred from these figures; the farmers of the world owe more to the McCormick reaper than they can repay. The whir of the American reaper is heard around the world. In Egypt, Russia, India, Australia the machine is helping man with more than a giant's strength. ”

“ The present number of reapers in operation to-day, all of them based upon the McCormick patents, is estimated at about two million, so that, counting a man's labor at $1 a day, here is a yearly saving of more than $100,000,000. The reaper thus stands beside the steam-engine and the sewing-machine as one of the most important labor-saving inventions of our time, relieving210 millions of men from the most arduous drudgery and increasing the world's wealth by hundreds of millions of dollars every year. ”

“ None of these machines, however, Hussey's excepted, were successful, or were used any length of time; nor is it necessary here to refer particularly to other attempts, about this time, or indeed prior to this period, for they were equally unsuccessful; and their inventors cannot claim the merit of doing a thing, that was not in fact performed—making an efficient and successful Reaper. We may here remark, however, that so far as now known, no machine like Bell's, on the shear or scissor principle, has succeeded in this country; or as we believe, is ever likely to succeed. ”

“ CYRUS HALL McCORMICK, 1867 From Painting by Cabanel
From that time to the present day the making of Reapers and Harvesters has remained an American business. An American machine must pay twenty dollars to enter France, and twenty-five to enter Hungary. But try as they may, other nations cannot learn the secret of the Reaper. They cannot produce a machine that is at once so complex, so hardy, and so efficient. ”

“ If the ancients were successful in making a practical implement for Reaping, by horse, or ox power, as some ancient writers assert, we certainly have no correct and reliable account of a machine that would be considered efficient or useful at the present day; a machine to save or tear off the heads only—as described by Pliny and Palladius—would more properly be termed a gathering machine, and not at all suited to the wants and habits of modern farmers.
Silver medal won by Mr. Hussey with the Reaper at New York in 1852. ”

“ Naturally, then, the first practical machines of America were invented where the great Western fields, which, in their ripeness, inspired inventors.
On a day, during the harvest of 1833, a group of farmers and idlers were interested in the tests of a reaper about to be made. Mr. Hussey's machine was started, but some disarrangement caused delay. An incredulous young man, strong of arm, picked up the implement of one of the cradlers, and swung it with a broad sweep into the grain, declaring that that was a kind of a reaper to have. ”

“ His pen cuts a "cleaner swath," as we farmers say, than ever did his Reaper; and this letter at least is certainly C. H. McCormick's own "invention," which no one else can lay any claim to. Yet, strange as it may appear, he contended before the Board of Extensions in order to invalidate Hussey's Patent, that he invented a Reaping Machine nine years before! So has perpetual motion been invented a hundred times—in the estimation of the projectors ”

“ So about the year 1800 inventors in Europe and in America took up the task of inventing a new kind of reaper. The first attempts were made in England where population was increasing very fast and where large quantities of grain were needed to feed the people. The first hints for a reaper were from a machine which was used in Gaul nearly 2,000 years ago. ”

“ McCormick's invention the line of civilization moves westward thirty miles each year." Already the London Times, after ridiculing the McCormick reaper exhibited at the London World's Fair of 1851, as "a cross between an Astley (circus) chariot, a wheel-barrow, and a flying-machine," confessed, when the reaper had been tested in the fields, that it was "worth to the farmers of England the whole cost of this exhibition." ”

“ By the next year McCormick was ready for a larger audience. The town of Lexington lay some eighteen miles south of his home, and he made arrangements with a farmer there, named John Ruff, to give an exhibition of his reaper in the latter’s field. Over a hundred people were present when McCormick arrived, all curious to see what could be done with the complicated-looking machine. Many of them were harvesters themselves, and none too eager to see a mechanical device enter into competition for their work. The field was hilly and rough, and the reaper careened about in it like a ship in a gale. ”

“ Crake! crake! nearly day and night; but now the rattle begins, and the bird must take refuge in the corn. Like the reaper, the mowing-machine is buried under the swathe it cuts, and flowers fall over it—broad ox-eye daisies and red sorrel. Upon the hedge June roses bloom; blackbirds whistle in the oaks; now and again come the soft hollow notes of the cuckoo. Angles and wheels, cranks and cogs, where are they? They are lost; it is not these we see, but the flowers and the pollen on the grass. There is an odour of new-made hay; there is the song of birds, and the trees are beautiful. ”

“ We will wake up the dry bones of these old countries, and civilise and Christianise them with our farm machinery.”
C. W. Marsh, inventor of the Marsh Harvester, made a sensational début in Hungary in 1870. Several grand dukes had arranged for a great contest of the various sorts of reapers on one of the royal farms in Hungary, so that the Minister of Agriculture might take notice. When the day arrived, there were nine reapers at the farm, mostly of European design.
Marsh’s strange-looking machine seemed to be a combination of reaper and workbench. ”

“ Often another tractor pulling a dozen wagons follows and the sacks are picked up and hauled to the granary or elevator.
Haying was once the hardest work on the farm, and in no crop has machinery been more efficient. The basic idea in the reaper, the cutter-bar, is the whole of the mower, and the machine developed with the reaper. Previously Jeremiah Bailey, of Chester County, Pennsylvania, had patented in 1822 a machine drawn by horses carrying a revolving wheel with six scythes, which was widely used. The inventions of Manning, Hussey, and McCormick made the mower practicable. ”

“ For they dislike the fierce light that beats upon a rich American.
Of its president, Cyrus H. McCormick the Second, the first word to be said is that he is not built on the same lines as his belligerent father. He would fare badly, very likely, if he were in charge of a catch-as-catch-can [Pg 107] business, such as the reaper trade was thirty years ago. The making of harvesters is, to him, half a duty—to his father, his workmen, and the machine itself—and half a profession—not a battle nor a game, as it was with the first Reaper Kings. ”

“ The solitary reaper alone in the great field goes round and round, the red fans striking beside him, alone with the sunlight, and the blue sky, and the distant hills; and he and his reaper are as much of the corn-field as the long-forgotten sickle or the reaping-hook.
The sharp rattle of the mowing-machine disturbs the corncrake in the meadow. Crake! crake! for many a long day since the grass began to grow fast in April till the cowslips flowered, and white parsley flourished like a thicket, blue scabious came up, and yonder the apple trees drop their bloom. ”

“ The Commissioner in his decision refers to the testimony of William S. McCormick, who, at that time, was a partner of Cyrus McCormick as a manufacturer and seller of the McCormick reaper:
A Worthless Machine
"As a farmer I used the reaper without a seat, before a good one was invented, and am perfectly certain that it was so nearly worthless that a machine without one could not be sold at any price that would pay in competition with one having a raker's seat ”

“ As a matter of fact, McCormick built his first successful reaper three years before he obtained his patent. Four horses were hitched to the machine and he went out into a neighboring field of oats to demonstrate it. In less than half a day he had reaped six acres, which was a remarkable performance [246] when we consider that a single acre was considered a day’s work for one man. McCormick’s machine had a reel above the cutter to hold the grain against the knife and as the grain was cut it dropped upon a platform. A man walked alongside the machine and removed the grain with a rake. ”

“ That, thanks to the gentlemen who are making such tools a speciality, has added a very useful tool to the machine shop—a reamer where the cutters are put in tapered and can be set up and the reamer enlarged and made to suit the gauge. This will enable us to make and maintain a commercially uniform hole in our work. But the successful use of a reamer of this kind depends upon the drill that precedes this reamer being made as nearly right as possible, so that the reamer will have little work to do. The less you give a reamer to do the longer it will maintain its size. ”

“ A form of scythe used for harvesting grain before the reaper came into use, or used in places where the reaper proved uneconomical or technologically inappropriate, as rough or hilly land. This specimen has four wooden fingers, or tines, that are 45 inches long and spaced 7 inches apart. The blade is 2 inches wide and as long as the fingers. Gift of New York Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York.
131. Self-Rake Reaper, 1895. USNM 213356; 1958. A McCormick Daisy Reaper of 1895 in which the operator sat on a seat mounted on the axle of the left wheel. Two horses drew the reaper. ”

“ Most interesting of all are the reapers because they represent the first successful efforts to introduce machinery into farming operations. Toward the close of the eighteenth century the Royal Agricultural Society of England offered a prize for the invention of a successful reaper, which stimulated inventive effort in this field. ”

“ Even the reaping machine is an old invention revived. Thus Barnabe Googe, the translator of a book from the German entitled 'The whole Arte and Trade of Husbandrie,' published in 1577, in the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of the reaping-machine as a worn-out invention—a thing "which was woont to be used in France. ”

“ Mr. Hussey found one who took an interest in his invention and became so confident of its value that he provided the necessary funds and mechanical facilities for manufacturing a reaper to be tested in the field. This was Jarvis Reynolds of Cincinnati. Drawings were made of the cutting apparatus and a description of it was sent by the inventor to a friend, Edwin G. Pratt, early in 1833.
The Reaper Historian
Another personal friend of Obed Hussey was Edward Stabler, who lived at Sandy Hill, Maryland, and was, as he termed himself, "a farmer and a mechanic." ”

“ Half-round taper reamers, such as shown in Fig. 1105, are used for finishing holes. The flat face is cut down, leaving rather more than a half circle; the clearance being filed or ground on the cutting side so as to enable the reamer to cut, and extending from the cutting edge to nearly half-way to the bottom of the reamer.
For holes, however, that are large enough to admit a tool of sufficient strength, the single-pointed boring tool produces the most true work.
Brass finishers use square taper reamers, which produce upon brass more true work than the half-round reamer. ”

“ Robots of the lower grades worked among the maze of towering machinery, oiling, testing, doing a multitude of tasks. But the robot-proctor, without paying them any attention, seemed to suddenly open at the side and an electro-flash gun, of large size, magnified by the Venusian scientists and raised to many times its normal power, came into view from the aperture. Without making a sound, without even a beam of light, the fatal weapon was aimed at the very heart of the colossal motors and generators, wheel and pistons seemed to warp, shrink and disappear uncannily ”