3-011-447 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The International Exhibition: Crosskill's Bell's reaping-machine, 1862. '...Prize Corn-mowing Machine of the trustees of W. Crosskill, Beverley...Wherever there are no furrows...[this machine] works admirably and with considerable ease. In the crop it has a reciprocating and an advancing motion...it is propelled by three horses walking abreast immediately behind the platform, which rises obliquely from the knife-bar, and receives the corn as it falls upon it. This platform is carried upon four wheels...The corn, as it falls, is carried by four endless leather straps, which traverse the platform from side to side, and is laid in regular swathe to the right or left. This is the only machine in use which does not require to be preceded by the mowman. It enters the field alone, cuts its way round, and then proceeds to work in any direction. It clears a space of 8ft. 3in, at each cut, and with three horses, working at an easy pace, will readily lay from seventeen to twenty acres low in a day, and, under favourable circumstances, more than two acres an hour. This machine owes its origin to a patent taken out in 1826 by the Rev. Mr. Bell...but his initial idea has been much improved upon'. From "Illustrated London News", 1862.