I hope everyone had a great long weekend and you were all able to stay high and dry. Today I’ve decided to write about a controversial topic… Who invented the combine harvester?

When I first searched for, “Who invented the combine harvester?” I came up with the answer, Hiram Moore in 1838. I continued to look into it a little more and realized that it maybe wasn’t as simple as that. Names such as John Ridley, John Wrathall Bull, Victor McKay, James Morrow, and others came up in searches that I did, all of them inventing, modifying, or perfecting some type of combined harvesting machine at various times in history. One website was even created to make it clear that Victor McKay did not invent it and that James Morrow did invent it. Regardless of who invented it, the first machines made it possible for fewer men to harvest a crop, but many more horses were needed to pull the machines, some needing up to 40 horses to be pulled. So let’s see… with 210 combines… 40 horses each… we’re going to need 8400 horses for August 7th… help!

From all the reading I’ve done I can’t really say I’ve figured out who was the first one to invent it, or what that combine harvester looked like, or what it could all do, but whether it was invented in 1838 or 1884, it is quite obvious that it was an important part of the history of farming practice. One example of this being the amount of grain grown in Australia expanding from 1000 acres in 1840 to 168,000 acres in 1856, a much needed remedy for a grain shortage at that time. The expansion has continued since then, in 1999-2000, the area of wheat planted in Australia was 30,150,000 acres, and that doesn’t include the increase of other grains, an impossible number if it weren’t for the advancement of harvesting technologies.

I will provide a few links for anyone who wishes to read more about the history of the combine harvester. Please feel free to share your knowledge of the combine harvester on our Facebook page.
- Invented in 1838?
- Who really invented the combine?
- The Revival of the Gallic Harvester