Combine harvester

The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from its combining three separate operations comprising harvesting—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers, and canola. The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock.

Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labour saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population that must be engaged in agriculture.

Scottish inventor Patrick Bell invented the reaper in 1826. The combine was invented in the United States by Hiram Moore in 1834. Early versions were pulled by horse, mule or ox teams. In 1835, Moore built a full-scale version and by 1839, over 20 ha (50 acres) of crops were harvested. By 1860, combine harvesters with a cutting, or swathe, width of several metres were used on American farms. Australian Hugh Victor McKay produced a commercially successful combine harvester in 1885, the Sunshine Harvester.

Combines, some of them quite large, were drawn by mule or horse teams and used a bullwheel to provide power. Later, steam power was used, and George Stockton Berry integrated the combine with a steam engine using straw to heat the boiler. At the turn of the twentieth century, horse drawn combines were starting to be used on the American plains and Idaho (often pulled by teams of twenty or more horses).

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