FIG. 149.—PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, HUSSEY’S REAPER, DECEMBER 31, 1833.
Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, and Obed Hussey, of Maryland, were the men who brought the reaper to a condition of practical utility. The commercial development of their machines was practically contemporaneous, and their respective claims for superiority had about an equal number of supporters among the farmers of that day. Hussey, originally of Cincinnati, but afterwards of Maryland, was the first to obtain a patent, which was granted December 31, 1833. An illustration of the patent drawing is given in [Fig. 149]. It embodied a reciprocating saw tooth cutter f sliding within double guard fingers e. It had a front draft, side-cut, and a platform. The cutter was driven by a pitman from a crank shaft operated through gear wheels from the main drive wheels. His specification provided for the locking or unlocking of the drive wheels; also for the hinging of the platform, and states that the operator who takes off the grain may ride on the machine.
FIG. 150.—PATENT OFFICE DRAWING, McCORMICK’S REAPER, JUNE 21, 1834.
On June 21, 1834, Cyrus H. McCormick, of Virginia, obtained a patent on his reaper. In [Fig. 150] appears an illustration of his patent drawing. This had two features which were not found in the Hussey patent, viz., a reel on a horizontal axis above the cutter, and a divider L, at the outer end of the cutter, which divider projected in front of the cutter, and separated in advance the grain which was to be cut from that which was to be left standing. McCormick’s machine had two cutters or knives, reciprocated by cranks in opposite directions to each other. This feature he afterward abandoned, adopting the single knife, described by him as an alternative. This machine was to be pushed ahead of the team, which was hitched to the bar C of the tongue B in the rear, but provision was made for a front draft by a pair of shafts in front, shown in dotted lines. The curved dotted line beside the shafts indicated a bowed guard to press the standing grain away from the horse. The divider L had a cloth screen extending to the rear of the platform.
Neither Hussey nor McCormick appears at that time to have been cognizant of the prior state of the art, and as the patent law of 1836 had not yet been enacted, there was little or no examination as to novelty, and no interference proceedings as to priority of invention, and consequently their respective claims were drawn to much that was old, and probably much that would have been in conflict with each other under the present practice of the Patent Office. In the Scientific American, of December 16 and 23, 1854, in a most interesting series of articles on the reaper, the Hussey machine is fully described. The first public trial was on July 2, 1833, before the Hamilton County Agricultural Society, near Carthage, O., and its success was attested by nine witnesses. Great stress was laid by Mr. Hussey on the double finger bar, i. e., a finger bar having one member above and the other below the knife. The Scientific American said the machine was a success from the first; that ““in 1834 the machine was introduced into Illinois and New York, and in 1837 into Pennsylvania, and in 1838 Mr. Hussey moved from Ohio to Baltimore, Md., and continued to manufacture his reapers there up to the present time.””
In 1836 Hussey was invited by the Maryland Agricultural Society for the Eastern Shore to exhibit his machine before them. On July 1 he did so, and made practical demonstration of its working to the society at Oxford, Talbot County, and again on July 12 at Easton. On the following Saturday it was shown at Trappe, and it was afterwards used on the farm of Mr. Tench Tilghman, where 180 acres of wheat, oats and barley were cut with it. The report of the Board of Trustees of the society was an unqualified commendation of the practicability, efficiency and value of the machine, and a handsome pair of silver cups was awarded to the inventor. The report was signed by the following well-known residents of the Eastern Shore: Robert H. Goldsborough, Samuel Stevens, Samuel T. Kennard, Robert Banning, Samuel Hambleton, Sr., Nichol Goldsborough, Ed. N. Hambleton, James L. Chamberlain, Martin Goldsborough, Horatio L. Edmonson, and Tench Tilghman.