Traditional grain harvesting was a laborious process, requiring separate cutting, binding, and threshing operations. Although the mechanical reaper, invented in 1831 by Cyrus McCormick, did the cutting, farmers still had to follow the machine and bind the sheaves of grain by hand. Hiram Moore created the first successful combine harvester in 1834 with the aim of speeding up the production of grain from the vast wheat lands of America. Corn and wheat spelled big money in the 1800s, but farmers had to employ dozens of farmhands in order to reap the benefits of their harvests, and this was a costly business.
Moore's invention, developed in the farmlands of Michigan, succeeded in combining the two separate processes of cropping and threshing grain into one simplified, mechanically powered step. This creation, paradoxically, was both a blessing and a curse for farm workers—while it saved their backs it also cost many of them their livelihoods.
The machine essentially works in a two-step process; first it harvests the corn, cutting the crop at the base with a sharp multibladed cylinder, then passing it inside the machine where it is threshed. Threshing separates the grain into wheat and chaff. The machine retains the saleable grain while leaving behind the chaff and straw, which can be used elsewhere on the farm for livestock feed and bedding.
It took as many as sixteen horses to drag the heavy machinery of early combine harvesters across the fields, but the effort was worthwhile since it combined the work of several men over many hours into one simplified movement. Steam engines were later used to ease the task, and more recently engine-powered combine harvesters have been developed, making the process of harvesting grain even more efficient.
