Big Sandy is an agricultural community. Those whose farm businesses depend on a combine understand the development of one of the most essential pieces of farm equipment. If you aren’t a farmer, you need to understand the value of a combine to farmers. A new combine price can vary depending on size, but for argument’s sake, I’m going with $700,000 for a new combine. That does not include the header, which cuts the grain and moves it to the conveyor belt inside the combine. A new header costs $125,000, but depending on the size of the header, it could be more or less.
Before the combine was invented, the wheat crop was cut down using hand tools such as a scythe. They would gather the grain in bundles before moving it to a building for threshing, separating the wheat from the shaft by beating the grain.
The following information was found at Historylink101.com, Iron Solutions, Iron Search, and Iron Appraiser.
The first combine was invented by Hiram Moore and John Hascall of Kalamazoo County, Michigan, who patented it in 1836. It was pulled by a team of mules, horses, or oxen and had a 15-foot cut. While researching, I saw one picture with 20 mules pulling the combine.
“In the late 1880s, California farmer George Stockton Berry integrated the combine with a steam engine to provide power to the mechanics. Men forked straw from the rear of the separator back into the firebox to heat the water in the boiler.”
“Around the globe, industrious farmer-inventors continued to streamline the harvesting process. In Australia, John Ridley made a successful stripper harvester that simply stripped the heads off the wheat stalks. Another Australian inventor, 20-year-old Hugh Victor McKay, refined the process and created the first commercial combine harvester called the Sunshine Header Harvester in 1885. The machine stripped the standing grain heads, threshed the grain, and cleaned it in one operation.”
“In 1911, California led the charge of manufacturing self-propelled combines with the Holt Manufacturing Company. Prior to the combine, the typical threshing crew consisted of 20 to 30 workers, while a combine crew consisted of only four or five men to operate the combine.”
“Beginning in 1915, International Harvester released its first line of tractor-pulled combines with an engine aboard that powered the threshing mechanism. J.I. Case and John Deere introduced their tractor-pulled combines in the 1920s. These tractor-drawn or pull-type combines were rapidly adopted after World War I, as many farmers had begun to use tractors.”
“In 1922, Massey-Harris (now Massey Ferguson) sent one of its pull-type combines to the Swift Current, Saskatchewan, Dominion Experimental Farm for testing and use under prairie conditions.”
“In 1923 in Kansas, the Curtis brothers and their Gleaner Manufacturing Company (now an Agco brand) patented a self-propelled combine which included several other modern improvements in grain handling. The Gleaner fit on a truck, which was a benefit to custom cutters who moved north with the harvest season, providing harvesting services to farmers.”
“By 1937, Thomas Carroll, working for Massey-Harris in Ontario, perfected the first commercially viable self-propelled combine.”
There was the famous “Harvest Brigade” during WWII, 1944. “Massey-Harris had men in airplanes flying over wheat fields from Texas to Canada to check the ripening process. Mechanics, fuel, and parts were stationed along the proposed route that the combines were taking. The WPB approved the project and in May 1944, the Harvest Brigade began by cutting flax in Texas and California’s Imperial Valley, then north, cutting rice and barley and the wheat crop in the Pacific Northwest. The brigade moved into northern Texas and Oklahoma, and by July, the red combines marched through Kansas, Colorado and Nebraska. By August, they reached the Dakotas, and by September, the Canadian wheat fields.”
“Combine innovations continued, when in 1975, New Holland introduced the first commercial twin-rotor combine, a significant advance in harvesting technology still in use today.”
The cab of the combine is a farmers home away from home. The technology is revolutionary. The majority of today’s combines are rotary combines offering multi-crop threshing and rotary separation. Optional equipment includes GPS, data collection, luxury panoramic view cabs, touchscreen monitors, power seats, and air-conditioning.
