Combine Harvester

A combine harvester is a machine that harvests grain and other seed crops such as wheat, rice, oats, barley, corn, soybeans and sunflowers, taking its name from combining several separate harvesting operations, reaping, threshing and winnowing, into a single pass. The Reverend Patrick Bell of Scotland designed a scissors-action reaper in 1826, and the American Hiram Moore built and patented, in 1835, the first true combine harvester capable of reaping, threshing and winnowing grain in one machine. Self-propelled combines followed in the twentieth century: the Holt Manufacturing Company produced the first in 1911, the Baldwin brothers' Gleaner Manufacturing Company patented a self-propelled model with modern grain handling in 1923, and the engineer Thomas Carroll perfected and brought to market, between 1937 and 1940, a lighter self-propelled combine for Massey-Harris that helped make the machine standard on farms.