The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1915-10-23
Centenary of Walter Wood, a Pioneer
 of the Harvester

Among the many men who share in the honor of the invention and de- ve1opment of ~the marvellous machines which now sing the harvest-song in the grain fields of the world not the least entitled to cEedit is Walter Alp bot Wood, whose centenary will be re- membered today in his native town of Mason, New Hampshire, and in the New York State village of Hoosick Falls, where he spent the greater part of his life, and where he died in 1892. Wood was born October 23, 1915, and while still a boy, he turned his attention to the improvement of agri- cultural machinery. He was only eleven years old when a Scotch cler- gyrnan, the Rev. Patrick Bell, invent ed the first harvester and laid the foundation of a great industry which was destined to revolutionize agri- cultural methods. The ttdings of this invention soon spread to America, and the, idea was seized upon eagerly by many fertile minds. Harvesters, reapers and mowers~were brought to their greatest state of perfection on this side of the Atlantic, and, although he did not rank among the first in this line of endeavor, Wood patented about thirty remarkable improve ments, many of which are still in use.
 The first reaping machine known was used more than eighteen centur- ies ago, in the shape of knives set into the end of a cart which was push ed along by oxen, and the wheat thus cut. It was not until the second quarter of the last century, however, that the reaper and the mower gain ed their ascendancy over the sickle and the fail.
 Obed Hussey, Abraham Randall and Cyrus H. Mccormick were the pioneers in the manufacture of mod ern harvesting machinery, although al 1F Io 6n1N& r1f rl. to the Scotch clergyman. Patrick Bell. The Hussey machine cut a har- vest. in 1892, and the Randall ma chine was first practically used in 1883, while Mccormick patented his machine in 1884. In the following year Walter A. Wood removed to Hoosick Falls and established himself as a manufacturer of reapers, mowers and binders. He was indebted to others for the basic ideas of his ma chimes, but that was also true of his predecessors, for Hussey, Randall and Mccormick had all incorporated in their machines many of the features of the earlier Bell invention.
 The Hussey machine was the first to attract general attention, winning world wide fame as the result of a public trial in July, 1893, before the Hamilton County Agric icu1tural So- ciety in a wheat field near Carthage, Ohio For a decade the other inven- tors and manufacturers made but lit tie headway in disputing the suprem acy of the Hussey machine. In the '40s Cyrus Mccormick brought suits against his competitors, but the prac7 tical defeat of his patents in the courts left a clear field for competition, and many factories sprung up. Hussey in Baltimore, Nanny of Rockford, III, Seymour and Morgan and Walter A Wood of New York, and Mccormick of Chicago soon had many rivals in the field.
 Then came the modern seIf-binder. the development of the ideas of Charles w and William W. Marsh. Walter A. Wood and William Deering; together with App1eoy, Cannon, Fit Ter, BeheI, SpauIdfng; Watson, ERen- wick Gordon and Locke, share the honors of their development with the Marsh brothers. Straw was first used to bind the grain, but wire soon took the place of straw, and in turn gave way to twine on the self binding ma chimes, which had their inception on farm near Plano, III.