Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 30, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 February 1914 — ONE BOY’S BRILLIANT IDEA [ARTICLE]

ONE BOY’S BRILLIANT IDEA

Youngster Told Hia Father to Try Scissors and So Invented Reaping Machines.

In 1830 Obed Hussey of Ohio was lij| venting a reaping machine, the first ever designed in, this country. His chief difficulty was the cutting device, which was three large Bickles, set in a frame and revolved so as to cut into the grain. It would not work satisfactorily. A young son, watching the experiment, asked his father why he did not use a lot of big scissors, with one handle fastened to one bar, and the other handle to a sliding bar, thus opening end closing them. Hussey instantly adopted the Idea, substituting for scissors the two sawtoothed blades which arts in common Use today on harvesters, the cutting action being Quite similar to that of scissors.

From the boy’s suggestion he perfected in one week a machine on which he had in vain exercised all his ingenuity for the preceding two years.

The principle of the cutting device is the principle of all of the great harvesting machines, and its benefit to the farming industry of the entire world has been unsurpassed by any other invention for use on the farm. — Saint Nicholas.