the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. 
L5 
Fig. 9. — Vicio of Adams and French's Harvester at work* 
I think that this description of machine is only available for light crops ; 
that the use of canvases, belts, and rollers is highly objectionable, on account 
of the tendency of the canvas to stretch and shrink, and of the straw to 
wind round the rollers, causing friction aud delay. The crop must be very 
light or the progress of the machine very slow, to allow two binders to tie up 
the grain without great waste. In some of the machines the men were fixed 
close together, and unavoidably got in each other's way, and the work was 
far too severe to be pursued for any length of time. 
A complete divergence, and, as I think, improvement, from the ordinary 
type of harvester was shown by George Esterley and Sons, of Manufis, 
Whitewater, Wisconsin. In this machine canvases, belts, and rollers are 
dispensed with ; we have a 5-foot knife, ordinarily geared, with a concave 
platform behind it ; an ordinary reel, and an extraordinary balanced rake- 
arm. The corn is laid upon the platform by the reel, and swept up the con- 
cave incline by the rake-arm. A section of the upper end of the concave plat- 
form is hinged, and can be raised or lowered, the object being to graduate 
the falling of the grain on to the transverse platform. The rake, after doing its 
work, that is, after delivering the grain on to the said transverse platform in 
the same position as it was originally left by the reel, comes forward and folds 
itself in between the arms of the reel, and this notwithstanding that the latter 
revolves the more rapidly. This is a very ingenious arrangement, and must 
be seen in work to be appreciated. The reel can be raised or lowered as 
required to suit differences in the crop. The most ingenious feature of this 
machine remains to be described, viz., a collector which works from side to 
side of the transverse table and collects and brings the grain pressed into a 
bundle to the workmen seated opposite each other. This is highly ingenious, 
and is effected with very simple gearing. ' A cam on the second gearing- 
wheel on the main axle actuates a sun-and-planet gear, which produces the 
necessary intermittent motion of the collector. The rakes are driven by a 
small spur-wheel on the main axle of the driving-wheel. I have attempted 
to show this by a sketch, Fig. 10, p. 16.* 
* In this sketch no attempt is made at exact proportions. The concave 
platform and transverse tying-platform are not accurately shown. The only 
idea has been to convey some notion of the simplicity of the mechanism by which 
such important results are obtained. 
