3-021-656 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Rev. Patrick Bell, L.L.D., inventor of the Reaping-Machine, 1868. Engraving from a photograph by Mr. E. Strachan. 'We have,...during the progress of the £1000 testimonial, adverted pretty fully to the circumstances under which Mr. Bell's invention was perfected; how, forty years ago, he arrived in Edinburgh with a model of it not much bigger than a rat-trap under his arm to show to the Highland and Agricultural Society authorities; and how he laboured at it secretly in an outhouse, till the advent of that happy moonlight night when he and his brother got the horse out of the stable, harnessed it to the machine, and laid the corn-stalks low at last...yet while thousands of pounds were saved annually by his machine, even Scotland had given no public recognition to her benefactor...[Eventually] the East Lothian Agricultural Club...[and] the Highland and Agricultural Society...[both] acknowledged the justice of a claim which had been too long overlooked...The clear sum collected still falls short of £1000 by about £120, and it is to be hoped that English Agriculturists, who owe as much as their Scottish friends to Dr. Bell's invention, will not hold back as they have hitherto done'. From "Illustrated London News", 1868.