Reaping Machine
a machine for reaping or cutting down grain in the field. There are numerous varieties.
Properly speaking, the REAPING HOOK (q. v.) (represented 1490 в. c. in a harvest scene on a tomb at Thebes, and still in use) and the scythe are reaping machines; but the term is generally confined to the modern machines, in which operations formerly carried out by the human hand are effected by machinery.
The idea of a mechanical reaper was probably suggested by Capel Lloft in 1785, and in 1786, Pott, an Englishman, made the first machine. In 1822 a selfsharpening mowing machine was patented in the United States. Between 1852 and 1874 nearly 3,000 patents for REASON reaping machines were taken out for the United States. Two of the most celebrated are McCormick's, invented about 1831, and improved in 1846, and Wood's reaping and automatic binding machine, first used in 1874. Modern reapers are of three classes, manual delivery, selfraking, and self-binding. A binder largely used, and pushed by 4 to 6 horses, clears a strip 12 to 20 feet wide.
There are combined headers and threshers which cut, thresh, and sack grain, doing 100 acres a day.