Top 10 farm machinery innovations: Number Five

V. Combined Harvester-Thresher. In 1830 brothers Hiram and John Pitts were credited with the first truly successful American separator, they also adapted a horse tread power to power it. Not long after this, Hiram soon added a fanning mill to the threshing drum and this allowed the grain to be separated and cleaned at the same time, hence the Combine was born. The name, Combine, which means "to become one[4]"'; five separate processes become one with the Combine, harvesting, reaping, threshing and winnowing. 

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Early versions of this Harvester-Thresher were Horse drawn however by By 1860, Combine harvesters with a cutting, or swathe, width of several meters were used on American farms.[1] Australian Hugh Victor McKay produced a commercially successful combine harvester in 1885, the Sunshine Harvester.[2]  History shows us that the Combine is at the top of the list of the "most economically important labor saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population that must be engaged in agriculture[3]".

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Not long after the Civil War, came the development of the ground-driven combines in the regions that grew wheat in the northwest. It is said that these ground-driven combines took up to 32 head of horses or mules probably less if the power being used were oxen since "A fully grown ox can easily outweigh a draft horse and can pull more weight[5]". Back in 1895 in the Dakotas on Bonanza farms, " it took six different people and 36 horses pulling huge harvesters, working 10 hours a day, to produce 20,000 bushels[7]". Around 1870 a Napa Valley inventor by the name of B.F. Cook is credited with putting a steam engine on a combine thereby making it possible of to need less "horse-power". Cook's invention became the standard for many more combine models to come[8]". It wasn't until an extremely hot summer in 1885, after the loss of many livestock to heatstroke that George Stockton Berry decided to take the straw and use it for fuel to heat the boiler of the steam engine and combine it into a single self-propelled machine. In 1886 when Berry's wheat crop neared harvesting he decided it was time to test his design; people came from miles around to see Berry and his contraption.  Spectators watched Berry move at three miles per hour and by dusk Berry had harvested 160 acres of grain[8]"; on that day the first self-propelled Combine was born. Historylink.com tells us that at that time "The cost of the reaper and thresher was about $3 a acre while the combine was between $1.50 and $1.75[9]". 



As we know steam power was replaced by gasoline power and by 1912 the combines were powered by gasoline. It is said that the United States Department of Commerce published a bulletin that stated "Without the combine,bread rationing in the United States would have been inevitable[10]". 

Side-Note: Berry's invention became known as the "Steam Traction Engine" and in 1921 Alexander Legge , GM of International Harvester company authorized the development of this all purpose engine, and the new tractor became known as the "Farmall" 

1. "The History of Combine Harvesters". Cornways.
2.  Jump up ^ Timesonline.co.uk, access date 31-09-2009
3.  http://www.greatachievements.org/?id=2955
4.  https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/combine
5.  https://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/viewhtml.php?id=259#oxen
6.  The John Deere Legacy , By Don Macmillan Wayne G. Broehl
7.  Shannon, The Farmers Last Frontier, p. 410
8.  Street, Beasts of the field, p 176
9.  http://historylink101.com/lessons/farm-city/combine.htm 
10.  http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~mnrrvn/Essay-First-Combines.html