mowing machine

mow mowing machine / mowing-machine

Charles Keith. Dealer in Peerless and Champion mowers. Self binding Osborne Harvesters, Pitts Threshers Steam and Horse Power, Oats, corn and feed. Volga, Brookings County, Dakota. - Kingsbury County News, February 24, 1881

A mowing machine was an agricultural machine pulled by horses, used for cutting hay. The cutting apparatus – consisting of sharp, triangular teeth of the cutting bar and a reciprocating scythe – was chain-driven and powered by the rotation of a driving wheel.

Haying was once the hardest work on the farm. Prior to the invention of the mowing machine, grain was cut with hand tools such as a sickle, cradle, or scythe. In the 1830s, Cyrus McCormick invented the first reaping and mowing machine, allowing one man to cut as much grain in one day as five men could using hand tools. — McCormick Reaper Centennial (Chicago: International Harvester Company, 1931).

"The mowing machine does in 1 hour what the scythe will hardly do in 7 hours." - The Encyclopedia Americana: A Library of Useful Knowledge, 1919, page 34.

LEFT - Advertisement for McCormick mowers and reapers from a Bismarck, Dakota Territory newspaper from the 1880s. RIGHT - Closeup of the cutter bar of a mowing machine. One of the triangular "teeth" is circled. Laura and Carrie were sent to town to purchase a piece similar to this one.

mowing machine / mowing-machine (BPC 24; TLW 1-2; LTP 9)