On the "Bonanza" farms of the West a
fifty horsepower engine draws sixteen ploughs, followed by
harrows and a grain drill, and performs the three operations of
ploughing, harrowing, and planting at the same time and covers
fifty acres or more in a day.
The basic ideas in drills for small grains were successfully
developed in Great Britain, and many British drills were sold in
the United States before one was manufactured here. American
manufacture of these drills began about 1840. Planters for corn
came somewhat later. Machines to plant wheat successfully were
unsuited to corn, which must be planted less profusely than
wheat.
The American pioneers had only a sickle or a scythe with which to
cut their grain. The addition to the scythe of wooden fingers,
against which the grain might lie until the end of the swing, was
a natural step, and seems to have been taken quite independently
in several places, perhaps as early as 1803. Grain cradles are
still used in hilly regions and in those parts of the country
where little grain is grown.
The first attempts to build a machine to cut grain were made in
England and Scotland, several of them in the eighteenth century;
and in 1822 Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster in Rennington, made a
mechanical reaper, but the opposition of the laborers of the
vicinity, who feared loss of employment, prevented further
development.
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