A NEW REAPER AND BINDER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XX, Issue 43, 12 August 1892, Page 31

A NEW REAPER AND BINDER.

The amalgamation of A. Harris, Son and Co., maktra of the Brantford Reaper and Bindsr, with the well-known maktra ot harvesting machinery, the Massey Manufacturing Go, both of Toronto, Canada, and now trading nnder the name of Massey-Harris 00, has brought about a great change over the farm machine and implement trade of Australasia. By consolidating five separate and distinct companies' patents, there is afforded an extraordinary opportunity of combining in one machine the best features of the several different machines with still a later and greater improvement in the production of an open endtd reaper and binder, with a new sheaf carrier and binder attachment. These patents have juat been granted to Messrs MaaseyHarris 00, for Tasmania, by a decision of a law case in the Patent Oourt of the colony, brought about by Messrs Hornsby and Bone, Limited, of Grantham, England, objecting to the application for patents of the Massey- Harris Co, Limited, on the gronnd that the patent was common property. The defence was baaed upon a rough out of the binder appearing in the Ironmonger, published in England in December last. The cut Bhown in this paper was a sketch of a reaper and binder at work in a field trial. Hornsbys contended that a similar binder to the Massey could be made from this engraving. This contention failed, as mechanical expert witnesses proved, that it would be impossible to construct the improved parts of the Masiey-Harris new open-ended reaper and binder from those cats, and the case, with fnll costs, was decided against the Hornsbys. We are informed that this machine has overcome the great difficulty experienced in closed back machines in harvesting long and heavy grain. A large number were built for test during the entire harvest of 1891 in Canada, and proved a complete success in every particular. The machine as three canvassts with the rear end of the upper elevator canvas frame, floating so that thick wads of grain will pass through without choking or threshing or interfering in any way with the heads of the grain. It has a most ingenious header board, that can bs regulated from a vertical to a korizonal position by the driver while the machine is in motion, to feed the long and short grain down to the knotter. The binder attachment of this new machine is so simple, neat, and symmetrical, and yet bo effective in operation, as to excel anything previously seen here. The sheaf carrier is constructed on a new principle, and is the result of long and careful experiments. It has four movements, which take place in the twinkle of an eye, and drops the sheaves gently and in a straight row, and comas back to place in time to catch the next sheaf.