The reaping machine commonly referred to as the mechanical reaper was invented by Cyrus McCormick and Obed Hussey in 1833 and 1834. It followed a major pattern for its uses in the harvesting of wheat and other small grains as well as grasses. The invention of the mechanical reaper drastically changed the lives and yields of grain farmers. In regards to the eventual success and large effect of the reaping machine, the historians usually ask themselves why the machines take too long to be accepted despite its invention in 1833. The first machines that Obed Hussey invented were adopted in the mid-1850’s. Why wasn’t a machine which could substantially increase productivity immediately adopted? Wouldn’t it have increased farmer’s profits during the 1830s and 1840s? Why do we see mass adoption across farms of all sizes in the 1850s? What changes during the 1850s and how does it lead to widespread adoption. What models explain the theory observed pattern of the adoption and what critical assumption must be made? What evidence does Olmstead and Rhode offer to support or justify this assumption? These are significant historical questions that this paper will attempt to answer.

Drawing from Olmstead (1975), during the 1830s, there never existed technological machines that promoted productivity. Thus, the mechanical reaper could not be rented or shared between farmers. It looked like it was a personal capital investment and the farmers acted as if they were the productivity maximizers. The farmers assumed that their judgments as to the number of acres of land to plant small grains were autonomous of the reaper[1]. Taking into account these assumptions as well as the knowledge of the costs, the time that the farmers could adopt the machines was predicted 21years, which was similar to twenty-one acres of land. The threshold was five years. From the time the first machine was sold; 1833, the gap fell between 1854-1857. It was the period the gap between the actual and threshold acreage fell for the diffusion of the reaper in the mid-1850’s. If the reaper had been adopted in the 1830s and 1840s, it would not have benefited the farmers because many of them practiced small-scale farming. Indeed, during this time, mechanization was expensive. The relative costs of the reaper did not correspond to the capital scarcity, meaning that the cost of the reaper restricted the adoption of the reaper in the 1830s and 1840s[2]