After man had invented his rude plow and had learned how to till the soil and raise the grain, it became necessary for him to learn how to harvest his crop, how to gather the growing grain from the fields. The invention of the plow, therefore, must have soon been followed by the invention of the reaper.

The first grain was doubtless cut with the rude straight knives used by primitive man. In time it was found that if the knife were bent it would cut the grain better. So the first form of the reaper was a curved or bent knife known as the sickle or reaping hook (Fig. 1). The knife was fastened at one end to a stick which served as a handle. When using the sickle the harvester held the grain in one hand and cut it with the other. (Fig. 2).

When the sickle first began to be used is of course unknown. Among the remains of the "stone age" (p. 39) are implements of flint which resemble the sickle, while among the remains of the so-called "bronze age" many primitive sickles made of bronze have been found. Nor do we know where the sickle was first used, although Egypt seems to have been the first home of the sickle just as it was the first home of the plow. Upon the wall of a building of ancient Thebes is a picture of an Egyptian harvest scene. Two men with sickles are cutting the wheat. A man following the reapers seems to be gleaning, that is, picking up the wheat that the reapers have cut. Other harvesters are carrying the grain to the threshing place where it is tramped out by the slow feet of oxen. A primitive sickle such as was used by the Egyptians was used by all civilized nations in ancient times, by the Hebrews, by the Greeks, and by the Romans.

The first improvement upon the primitive sickle was made by the Romans. About the year 100 A.D. the Roman farmers, who were at the time the best farmers in the world, began to use a kind of scythe for cutting grass. The Roman scythe was simply an improved form of the sickle; it was a broad, heavy blade fastened on a long straight handle, resembling the pruning hook of to-day (Fig. 3). The scythe was swung with both hands and it was used chiefly for cutting grass.

For more than a thousand years after the appearance of the Roman scythe agriculture in Europe was everywhere neglected and little or no improvement was made in farming implements. About the end of the Middle Ages, however, improvements in the form of the scythe began to appear. In Flanders farmers began to use an implement known as the Hainault scythe (Fig. 4). This scythe had a fine broad blade and a curved handle. When reaping with this scythe the reaper with his left hand brought the stalks of grain together with a hook and with his right hand he swung the scythe and cut the grain. This scythe was an improvement upon the sickle but it was still a very awkward implement.

The Hainault or Flemish scythe was followed by the cradle scythe. On this scythe (Fig. 5) there were wooden fingers running parallel to the blade. These fingers, called the cradle, caught the grain as it was cut and helped to leave it in a bunch. In the early cradle-scythe the fingers were few in number and they ran along the blade for only a part of its length, but in America during the colonial period the cradle was improved by lengthening the fingers and increasing their number. At the time of the Revolution the improved American cradle was coming into use and by the end of the eighteenth century it was driving out the sickle.

But even the excellent American cradle-scythe could not meet the needs of the American farmer. The cast iron plow which was brought into use in the early part of the nineteenth century (p. 82) made it possible to raise fields of wheat vastly larger than had ever been raised before. But it was of no use to raise great fields of grain unless the crop could be properly harvested. Wheat must be cut just when it is ripe and the harvest season lasts only a few days. If the broad American fields were to be plowed and planted there would have to be a reaping machine that would cut the grain faster than human hands could cut it with the scythe (Fig. 6).

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. Pliny, who described for us a wonderful plow used in his time (p. 77), also describes this ancient reaper of the Gauls. It consisted of a large hollow frame mounted on two wheels (Fig. 7). At the front of the frame there was a set of teeth which caught the heads of grain and tore them off. The heads were raked into the box by an attendant. The machine was pushed along by an ox. This kind of machine was doubtless used in Europe for a while but it was not a success. It passed out of use and for many centuries it was entirely forgotten. Still, the first English reaping machines were made after the plan of this interesting old reaper of ancient Gaul.

The most remarkable of the early reapers was one invented by Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster of Remington, England. In 1822 Ogle constructed a model for a reaper which was quite different from any that had appeared before and which bore a close resemblance to the improved reapers of a later date. In Ogle's reaper (Fig. 8) the horse walked ahead beside the standing grain, just as it does now, and the cutting apparatus was at the right, just as it is now. The cutter consisted of a frame at the front of which was a bar of iron armed with a row of teeth projecting forward. Directly under the teeth lay a long straight edged knife which was moved to and fro by means of a crank and which cut the grain as it came between the teeth. A reel pushed the grain toward the knife and there was a platform upon which the grain when cut might fall. Ogle's machine did not meet with much success yet it holds a very high place in the history of reaping machines, for it had nearly all the parts of a modern reaper.

Although McCormick had his reaper in successful operation by 1831 he did not take out a patent for the machine until 1834. One year before this (in 1833) Obed Hussey, a sailor living in Baltimore, took out a patent for a reaper that was successful and that was in many respects as famous a machine as McCormick's. So while McCormick was the first in the field with his invention, Hussey was the first to secure a patent. The machines of McCormick and Hussey were very much alike: both had the platform, the iron bar armed with guards and the long knife moving to and fro. The most remarkable feature of Hussey's machine was the knife which consisted of thin triangular plates of steel sharpened on two edges and riveted side by side upon a flat bar (Fig. 10). The saw-like teeth of Hussey's knife caught the wheat between the guards and cut it better than any knife that had as yet appeared. Both the McCormick reapers and the Hussey reapers were practical and successful and each of these inventors performed a noble part in giving the world the reaper it needed.

The McCormick and the Hussey reapers gave new life to farming in the United States. Especially was the reaper a blessing to the Western farmers. In 1844 McCormick took a trip through the West, passing through Ohio, Michigan, Illinois, and Iowa. As he passed through Illinois he saw how badly the reaper was needed. He saw great fields of ripe wheat thrown open to be devoured by hogs and cattle because there were not enough laborers to harvest the crops. The farmers had worked day and night and their wives and children had worked but they could not harvest the grain; they had raised more than the scythe and sickle could cut. McCormick saw that the West was the natural home for the reaper and in 1847 he moved to Chicago, built a factory, and began to make reapers. In less than a year he had orders for 500 machines and before ten years had passed he had sold nearly 25,000 reapers. It was these reapers that caused the frontier line to move westward at the rate of thirty miles a year.

Improvements upon the machines of Hussey and McCormick came thick and fast. One of the first improvements was to remove the grain from the platform in a better way. With the first machines a man followed the reaper (Fig. 9) and removed the grain with a rake. Then a seat was provided and the man sat (Fig. 11) on the reaper and raked off the grain. Finally the self-raking reaper was invented. In this machine, as it appeared in its completed form about 1865, the reel and rake were combined. The reel consisted of a number of revolving arms each of which carried a rake (Fig. 12). As the arms revolved they not only moved the standing grain toward the knife, but they also swept the platform and raked off the wheat in neat bunches ready to be bound into sheaves. So the self-raking reaper saved the labor of the man who raked the wheat from the platform.

Because it saved the labor of one man the self-raking reaper was for a time the king of reaping machines. But it did not remain king long, for soon there came into the harvest fields a reaper that saved the labor of several men. This was the self-binder. With the older machines, as the grain was raked off the platform it was gathered and bound into sheaves by men who followed the reaper, one reaper requiring the services of three or four or five human binders. With the self-binder (Fig. 13) the grain was gathered into sheaves and neatly tied without the aid of human hands. At first, wire was used in binding the sheaves but by 1880 most self-binders were using twine. So the self-binder saved the labor not only of the man who raked the grain from the platform but it saved the labor of all the binders as well.

The last step in the development of the reaper was taken when the complete harvester was invented. This machine cuts the standing grain, threshes it, winnows13 it, and places it in sacks (Fig. 14). As this giant reaper travels over the field one sees on one side the cutting bar 15 to 25 feet in length slicing its way through the wheat, while on the other side of the machine streams of grain run into sacks which, as fast as they are filled, are hauled to the barn or to the nearest railway station. The complete harvester is either drawn by horses—30 or 40 in number—or by a powerful engine. It cuts and threshes 100 acres of wheat in a day and the cost is less than 50 cents an acre. It does as much work in a day as could have been done by a hundred men before the days of McCormick. Of all the wonderful machines used by farmers the most wonderful is the complete harvester, the latest and the greatest of reapers.