Yes, the combine harvester is one of the greatest inventions of the industrial era. Maybe another time we’ll take a deeper look at its history and economic significance. But when I ran across this picture of a vintage Claas combine posted at the Cohort by Hannes, it reminded me of that these were the ultimate mechanical monsters when I first saw them as a little kid. They were a seductive and terrifying mix, thanks to all the endless gears, chains, belts pulleys, sprockets, shafts, cutting blades wheels, augers, blowers, eccentrics, flails, cams, rods, and a dozen other mechanical devices I still don’t have the names for. Rube Goldberg was of course the inventor.
They looked like straight out of nightmare, clattering along and threatening to suck up any wayward children and turn them into into high-protein flour. And although I’m not exactly scared of them, I give them my due respect.
Surely it can’t be sheer coincidence that the combine looks so much like a grasshopper, the original harvester.
Hiram Moore is credited with developing the first functional combine harvester in 1835, which combined the functions of reaping, threshing and winnowing of grain cereal crops. The soon became scaled up for America’s large farms, pulled by twenty horses or mules, as in this case.
Now that’s a lot of horsepower at work.
When I used to spend summer during my grade school years on a Mennonite farm in Iowa, these old hulks rusting away were common sights. And I spent plenty of time climbing up, in, through, down and out of their innards. Not that I properly understood them as a consequence, but it gave me a healthy respect for all the mechanical thought that went into them.
Mr. Yoder had an an old tractor-pulled combine, powered by a Wisconsin air-cooled V4, for harvesting the oats. And he had an Allis Chalmers WD45 tractor to pull it with. He was going to use it to harvest the oats for another farmer, and he filled the tractor’s rear tires with water, to give extra traction. I kind of wondered about that. Sure enough, one of the tires ripped wide open.
So he had to hitch up the ancient and much less powerful John Deere Model B, which had all of 16hp. The drive to this farm a couple of miles away was already interminable, as the B was very slow on the road, topping out at 12 mph. I can still see the gravel going by so slowly as I looked down at the drawbar I was standing on; every pebble was distinct.
And then combining this field had to be done in one of the B’s lower gears, due to it being so light and low-powered. It was one of the longest days of my young life, either riding along behind the seat or sitting under a tree watching that rig slowly work its way through he oats. And of course the combine broke down…
So let’s get back to the self-propelled kind, which are even that much more compelling. Here’s another shot of a Claas, a German brand, showing some of all that wonderful machinery.
This video of a vintage Claas shows all that in action, with a more modern Claas in the background.
Apparently Claas is active in the US now, and also holds records for the most productive combines. Here’s their biggest combine, the Lexion 780 at work. Impressive, but where’s all the gears, chains, rods, belts and other clattering machinery?
mn
I have seen Claas combines in fields in central Indiana. Last I knew my BIL was still running an International Harvester which is quite uncommon here in John Deere-Land.
Damn but that John Deere B brings back memories, that one is virtually identical to the one my father was given by my stepmom’s Uncle Cal when Dad bought his property in the country, right down to the spoke wheels. I know exactly what you mean, as I got a decent amount of seat time on the B myself. Yes, it was very, very slow, but it made up for it with that fabulous ChuffChuffChuffChuff from that twin cylinder engine under load.
I found a great video of someone starting and running a slightly newer one. The only difference in our procedure was that my father would let the engine exhaust blow the big Donald Duck orange juice can from the stack.
Now you’re talking! I used to have a John Deere 30 PTO-driven combine, and ran it behind my 8N a few times:
The 8N’s ground speed in first was a bit fast for the 30, so I left a good bit of grain behind. Greasing the combine before use took a good half-hour or more!
An elderly neighbor was involved in a bad car accident back in 2008, so my boys mowed their lawn all summer, and come harvest, I used his JD 730 and my 30 to harvest his oats. He also had an older JD 6600 self-propelled combine that I used to harvest about two acres of field corn that we used as feed for our 50 laying hens.
Back when I was looking for a combine, I ran across an Allis-Chalmers demonstrator model (from the late 1940s) that had cutaway sides so you could see all the innards. Fascinating.
Here’s the 730 with the 30:
And here’s the 6600:
Very nice video of the 30 with the 8N. Brother Tony co-owns an old 30, and a less old 3300 self-propelled, that they use to harvest the wheat and barley they grow for a Mississippi River distillery near Davenport. The have to use Dad’s 60 (green tractor) to pull the 30 (green combine) as the neighbor’s 70 (green tractor) has too high a first gear, just as with your 8N (red tractor). Is everyone following this?
To answer Paul’s question about what happened to all the gizmo’s, they just hide them behind more panels these days. I got temporarily stuck inside Dad’s old Case as a child, sent in through an access port to help adjust the straw walkers. So I also have a healthy respect for the beasts. But no better time to be on a farm than during the harvest!
“but where’s all the gears, chains, rods, belts and other clattering machinery?”
Replaced by a large hydraulic pump connected to a PTO (Power Take Off), with hoses running to hydraulic motors throughout the machine. The picture below shows the hoses running to a motor driving the grain head reel.
I remember reading about John Deere building AWD combines back in the seventies. They placed hydraulic motors in the rear wheel hubs, and the hydraulic hoses allowed power delivery even though the wheels pivoted. As hydraulic motor efficiency has increased, they’ve been applied across the board, and on some equipment drive all four wheels.
The John Deere dealership my Dad works for had an old (late 70s? Early 80s?) John Deere combine secluded away in an outbuilding in the mid 90s. I never found out what the story was on it but it was likely a trade-in that just wasn’t in good enough shape to be “for sale” at that time.
One cold winter day they found a lost puppy hiding in that outbuilding and curled up on the combine, he was a black lab (mostly) and they named him TURBO because the combine had those garish graphics to let the world know that its diesel was TURBO-charged.
John Deere did “hydraulic all the things” and I remember when the first John Deere utility vehicles came out (pre-Gator) and they were hydryostatic drive from day one. That seemed futuristic to a kid who was used to the 4 speed manual in Dad’s mid 70s 112 garden tractor.
My dad lost his hand in an Allis Chalmers Gleaner model A. not the only incident with a combine that i personally know of. As the years went by more and more shields and guards were added and that hid the crime scene.
The Allis Chalmers Model 60 All Crop (way different than Gleaner) pull type was really the first pull type that broke thru and was a big seller.
Massey Harris broke thru with a popular self propelled combine in WWII. they petitioned that it would be a labor savor and free up farm kids to become cannon fodder.
I believe Cat imported the Claas when they were producing their Challenger tractor. They had a reputation for being the Mercedes Benz of combines. Nice if you could afford them.
…”They had a reputation for being the Mercedes Benz of combines”…
Certainly the ones powered by MB. Claas doesn’t build their own engines, but their combines do have an excellent reputation indeed. The company also builds other farm machinery, like tractors.
I’m not originallyfrom farm country, and although where I live now it’s quite agricultural, it’s mostly hand picked field vegetables, berries etc. But I feel like we learned about the combine – along with the cotton gin, Samuel Colt’s mass production, etc, – in US history class in junior high or high school. Highlighted as one of those inventions which changed the economy, contributed to agribusiness but also the rural to urban migration due to reduced need for farm labor, etc. Does anyone else remember learning about that, and do they still teach these things in school, or have they diminished in importance with a modern perspective?
Same in Australia, dman. I suspect with the population’s shift from rural areas to the big cities, education has become more city-oriented as well. It’s as though those who set the curriculum regard rural issues and the history of our nation as being of little importance. Or is it a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’? A very short-sighted view, IMHO.
Despite growing up in the country, my 30-y-o daughter is constantly amazed at the things we know and take for granted that she was never taught in school. She’s learnt a lot from the University of Mum and Dad.
My father was put out of business by the combine. He owned a threshing machine in the 1950s and I remember going with him to work. The previous day, grain was cut and raked into windrows. “Hay sweeps” would gather up the grain and bring it to the thresher, where it was tossed in by hand using pitch forks. My father stood as king of his domain, grease gun in one hand, oil can in another, and belt full of wrenches, in the center of a hive of sweating men, trucks, sweeps, and tractors. Not very efficient, but the job got done.
My mother grew up on a farm in the 1930s and 40s in northwest Ohio and I have heard her talk about when the threshing crew could come to the farm. Her mother would set up extra large tables and feed a whole bunch of hungry men for the few days when the crew was engaged in threshing on their farm. The crew would migrate from farm to farm with the big threshing machine and get the job done for all of the small farmers.
Yup, and if you were kid with nothing else to do, you might soon be peeling a 30 pound sack of potatoes. Dry land farming on marginal cropland was a risky proposition, between droughts, hail storms, and grasshoppers. Although some farmers got wealthy, many pursued farming as a “hobby”, hedging their bets by raising cattle or sheep, or working odd jobs. Of course, the gold standard was having a wife who worked at the courthouse!
The “gold standard”. Hahahahahaha!!!
And there is a tractor connection with your combine story. As a young man, John Froelich worked the harvest in South Dakota, at a time when huge steam engine tractors were used to pull the harvesters. The steam engines were huge, bulky, thirsty beasts that also threw out sparks from their boilers that threatened to set the prairie on fire. Anyone who has been on the prairie during dry season would realize that this is not a good thing. Thinking he could do better, he went home to Iowa, purchased a single cylinder gasoline engine from the Van Duzen company in Cincinnati, and with a friend figured out how to attach it to the running gear of a small steam engine. As it had both forward and reverse gears, it is credited as being the first successful gasoline powered “traction engine,” or tractor. They shipped it by rail to South Dakota for the 1892 season and had good success with it pulling a Case combine. He returned home and built several for a local firm, but these were of less use on the smaller farms of Iowa. He left to continue his experiments with tractors, but the company continued to build stationary gasoline engines, becoming the Waterloo Gasoline Engine Company that built the Waterloo Boy tractor and was eventually bought out by John Deere, laying the foundation for generations of John Deere tractors.
Well, as usual with so many of the pieces on this site, it brought back memories of things half-forgotten.
In the 1970’s, my dad achieved his lifelong dream of becoming a farmer. But he was one with no money. so that meant constant thrashing on the outdated, ancient equipment he bought.
That equipment included an ancient John Deere self propelled combine. I had to go to some implement dealer for him and pick up a crated, never-used part he wanted for it that they gave to him because no one else wanted it.
He also had one of the 2-cylinder John Deere tractors. I don’t recommend driving one for any length of time without ear protection.
I appreciate farmers, but I have NO desire to farm for a living.
Here in Southwest Indiana you mostly see John Deere and Case/IH combines. However, there are also quite a few Lexion units, too. They are painted Caterpillar yellow and sold alongside Challenger tractors. They are sold mainly by Caterpillar dealers. My son in law and his family have been using the Lexion combine for several years and currently own two with a new one on order to replace the oldest unit. They always get top trade in because of the extreme care my son in law gives them. All the equipment is thoroughly cleaned after harvest and everything gets serviced and a nice coat of wax before being stored indoors.
It is also getting to be fairly common to see combines and tractors on tracks.
A ride in the cab on one of these monsters will show you just how hi tech they have become.
A couple of years ago my daughter and son in law were lucky enough to take a trip to Germany and a tour of the factory.
Every time I look at the inside of one of these I am amazed at all the pumps and hoses and wonder how anyone can work on them. They kind of remind me of all the complicated smog equipment on ’70’s cars.