Part 14

From the Genesee Farmer, December 6, 1834.

"To the Editor of the Genesee Farmer:

"I wrote you last May that Mr. Hussey, the inventor of a machine for harvesting wheat, had left in this village one of his machines for the purpose of giving our farmers an opportunity to test its value, and I promised to write you further about it when it had been put to use. For many reasons which will not interest either yourself or the public, the matter has been delayed till the first rainy day, after my fall work was out of the way, should give leisure to remember and fulfill my promise.

"The machine has been fully tried, and I am gratified to be able to say that it has fully succeeded; hundreds of farmers from the different towns of this and the adjoining counties have witnessed its operations, and all have not only expressed their confidence in its success, but their gratification in the perfection of the work.

"As every inquirer asks the same series of questions, I presume your readers will have a like course of thought, and wish for satisfaction in the same particulars. To give them this, I will write them in their order, and give the answers:

"Does the machine make clean work?

"It saves all the grain. To use the language of a gratified looker-on, an old and experienced farmer, 'it cheats the hogs.'

The hogs are the gleaners in this section of country.

"Does the machine expedite the work?

"What the machine is capable of accomplishing, we who have used it can hardly say, as we had no field in fit order, large enough for a fair trial through a whole day; and can only say what it has done. Five acres of heavy wheat, on the Genesee flats, were harvested in two hours and a quarter.

"In what condition is the wheat left, and how is the work done where the wheat is lodged?

"The machine leaves the wheat in gavels large enough for a sheaf, and where grain stands well enough to make fair work with the cradle, it leaves the straw in as good condition to bind as the gavels of a good reaper. Whether the grain stands or is lodged is of little consequence, except as to the appearance of the sheaf, and the necessity of saving more straw, when lodged, than is desirable. The condition of the sheaf when the grain is lodged depends much upon the adroitness of the raker.

"What number of hands, and what strength of team is necessary to manage the machine advantageously?

"Two men, one to drive the team and the other to rake off the wheat, and two horses, work the machine; but when the grain is heavy, or the land mellow, a change of horses is necessary, as the gait of the horses is too rapid to admit of heavy draft. The horses go at the rate of four to five miles an hour, and when the growth of straw is not heavy a fair trot of the team is not too much.

"Is the machine liable to derangement and destruction from its own motion?

"This is a question which cannot be so directly answered as the others. We have only used the machine to cut about fifty acres, and have had no trouble; judging from appearances so far, should say it was as little subject to this evil as any machinery whatever. The wear upon the cutting part being so little as to require not more than fifteen minutes sharpening in a day; there is no loss of time on this score.

"Is the sheaf a good one to thresh?

"The man who has fed the threshing machine with the grain of twenty acres cut by this machine, says the sheaves are much better than those of cradled grain, and quite as good as those of a reaper.

"There is one more advantage beyond ordinary inquiries, of consequence, where so much grain is raised as in this valley; be the grain ever so ripe, there is no waste of grain by any agitation of the straw, and all the waste which can take place must arise from the handling and shaking in binding.

"I am yours, etc.,

"WM. C. DWIGHT.

"Moscow, Livingston Co., N. Y., Nov. 14, 1834.

"N. B.--The machine we used was intended only for upland, but by some little alterations and additions we used it with equal facility on all kinds of soil; and it can be used on any farm so clean from stumps and stones as not to endanger the blocking the wheels."

The following letter is evidence for 1835, and also refers to the originality of the invention by O. Hussey.

"Palmyra, Mo., Aug. 14, 1854.

"Friend Hussey--Yours duly received. As to the machines sent by you (ordered some two years since) they both worked well.

"Before you had invented your machine in 1831 or 1832, your attention was drawn to a mode of cutting grain, hemp and grass and you told me you thought you could invent such a machine to be drawn by horses; and after you had returned to Cincinnati from Laurenceburg you wrote me a letter in '32 or at the furthest in '33 (for I left Indiana 2nd Oct., 1833) with a draft and description of a plan for cutting grain. The draft was thus (here follows a diagram of the cutting apparatus exactly as described by the patent) and the description was, that these knives were to work by the motion of the wheels, being a perfect description of the invented principle.

"As soon as I saw the plan, I was satisfied of its success and wrote to you that there was no doubt of the success of your machine; that it was astonishing the world had so many thousand years been confined to the sickle when so obvious a mode of cutting grain and grass existed; and shortly after you obtained a patent for the machine.