OFFICIAL RKIKOSPECTIVF FXHIHUION 



sooner ihan the fact that an inventor attempts to accomplish many things 

 long before the tinie is ripe for the successful accomplishment of his 

 efforts; and \vc fuul that when Cilailstone. of l-'.ngland, in 1806, built a 

 reaper, he was not content with merely cutting the straws anil laying 

 them in a swath, as a simple machine can ilo, but sought to leave the 

 straw in gavels, ready to be bounti and out of the path of travel in 

 cutting the next rounil. No grain had, as far as we can learn, yet 

 been cut and so delivered. 



Salmon, who followeil him, had i beu. 

 the same object in view, anil Ogle, 

 the ingenious English schoolmaster, 

 in iSj2, laiil the straws in gavels, 

 directly behind the receiving plat- 

 form. 



Notwithstaniling this, these men 

 had grown gray before a machine 



actually came into practical use that accomplished that end. When Bell 

 provided his machine with Salmon's shears for cutting, Ogle's reel, and 

 his own endless conveyor he laid the foundations, in no small measure, 

 for modern machines. He "budded better than he knew," .Miliough 

 his reaper was limited in its use to the humid climate of northern l^ngland 

 and Scotland, mainly, where it was thought necessary to permit the grain 

 to lie and thus become dry before being bound, that endless conveyor 

 and Hussey's cutting apparatus, which came a little later, made the mod- 

 ern self-binding harvester possible. 



Half a century ago the first effort to bind grain by partly automatic 

 means was made. One year laterjurther attention was given to mechan- 

 ism for binding each bundle automatically. Nearly all attempted to bind 

 the prepared gavels, and not to operate upon the continuous swath that 

 Bell had made possible. Twenty-five years of laborious harvests passeil 

 before any succrssfnl aiitdm.iiic hinders were placed upon the market, 



but in the meantime a giant was born 

 that in its maturity bore into the 

 tf\c^ /y'W^H^^^^BI^^Kiy fields the successful automatic binder. 

 ^^t^Tjt^"^"^^^^^^^^^^^ That giant among harvesting ma- 

 ^ cliinery was the Marsh harvester, 



and it constituteil one of the most 

 far-reaching ste|)s that led to the 

 accomplishment of the almost ani- 

 mate steel that tics in buiulles prac- 

 tically every straw grown in the 

 American fields, anil is I.inl relieving iMiropcan labor from the burning 

 sun and the stings of the field. 



Bell left as a legacy the fact that an endless conveyor could be made 

 to deliver a continuous swath, and Marsh Brothers taught us that the 

 straw could be taken from a receptacle, in gavel form, and bound before 

 being thrown to the ground. 



The practicability of the Marsh harvester was demonstrated by the 

 use of thousands before inventors of binding devices availed themselves 

 of its principles and placed automatic attachments where the men had 

 stood. 



Wire was first practically used as band material, but straw bands 



