The Reaping Hook was the First Implement Used for Harvesting Grain of which we have Record
This pictures the reaping hook as still used in India.
Today the years glide by like pleasant pictures. We are fed, busy and happy. We almost let the dead bury their dead today while the living drive forward their tasks, achieving as much in a year as the old ages did in twenty. We have learned to feed ourselves and the food fills our bodies and brains with energy which must find expression in useful accomplishment. “Blessed is he who has found his work to do,” we say nowadays, “but thrice blessed is he who has found a machine to do it for him.”
Thread your way back through history to the time when the slender lives of men expanded into full and useful employment, and you will find that, so far as raising the world’s food is concerned, it all began with the invention of the reaper in only the last century. It is interesting to know something of the precarious entry of this machine and something of the dark background from which it emerged.
The Scythe is a Development of the Reaping Hook
The blade was made larger and the handle longer so two hands could be used.
The Reaping Hook or Sickle.
From the first pages of history we find that the reaping hook or sickle is the earliest tool for harvesting grain of which we have record. Pliny, in describing the practice of reaping wheat says, “One method is by means of reaping hooks, by which the straws are cut off in the middle with sickles and the heads detached by a pair of shears.” Primitive sickles or reaping hooks made of flint or bronze are found among the remains left by the older nations. Pictures made in 1400 or 1500 B. C. upon the tombs at Thebes in Egypt, which are still legible, show slaves reaping with sickles. This crude tool, brought into use by ancient Egypt, remained almost stationary as to form and method of use until the middle of the last century.
The scythe, which is a development from the sickle, enables the operator to use both hands instead of one. The scythe is still a familiar tool on our farms, but it serves other purposes than that of being the sole means of harvesting grain.