Obed Hussey, Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap
History
Obed Hussey, Who, of All Inventors, Made Bread Cheap
Harvesting machinery; Hussey, Obed, 1792-1860
The Doctor undertakes to tell us _what is wanted_, but fails entirely to
inform his readers _how to do it_. That John Bull had not done it is
clearly established; but Brother Jonathan, the "Live Yankee," as John
calls his cousin, has solved the problem; and the solution is so simple,
when you know how to do it! that it is marvelously strange no one for
centuries had before struck upon the right key.
Philip Pusey, Esq., M. P. and F. R. S.--the chief manager of the London
Exhibition--admits the failure, though apparently reluctantly; but the
source of his information, in writing about the American machines, was
interested and defective; and when he again writes on this subject he
will be better informed. He says: "At the opening of this century it was
thought that a successful reaping machine had been invented, and a
reward had been voted by Parliament to its author. The machine was
employed here and abroad, but from its intricacy, fell into disuse.
Another has been lately devised in one of our Colonies, which cuts off
the heads of the corn, but leaves the straw standing, a fatal defect in
an old settled country, where the growth of corn is forced by the
application of dung. Our farmers may well, therefore, have been
astonished by an American implement which not only reaped the wheat, but
performed the work with the neatness and certainty of an old and perfect
machine. Its novelty of action reminded one of seeing the first engine
run on the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830. Its perfection
depended on its being new only in England; but in America the result of
repeated disappointments and untired perseverance, etc."
[Sidenote: English Claims]
We propose to prove, and by better evidence, and disinterested too, than
he then had, that in 1833, near the date of "the first engine run on the
Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830," the American machine cut the
"corn" just as perfectly, with equal "neatness and certainty" as did the
"Novelty" or "Rocket" pass over the Liverpool and Manchester railway. We
shall again recur to English authority. John Bull is a right honest and
clever old gentleman in the main; but he is rather prone to claim what
he has no title for--inventions, as well as territory. We are willing to
give him what he can show a clear deed for, but no more. He beat us by
one year only in the Locomotive; but we fairly beat him eighteen or
twenty in the Reaping Machine; and yet some of his writers contend to
this day that we "_pirated_" from Bell and other English inventors
all we know!
[Sidenote: English Inventors and Their Mistakes]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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