Seventy Years of Farm Machinery: Vol. 2

This new hardback starts with an account of the development of the combine harvester including predecessor machinery such as binders and threshers. The many changes in combine technology are fully covered and examples of associated equipment such as pea and bean harvesters are included. The author takes a similarly detailed look at balers before moving on to the wide range of machinery for hay and silage. Major sections deal with the sugar beet and potato harvest, in each case giving details of the developments leading to complete harvesters. Under Estate Machinery the author shows some of the equipment that has been used for hedging and ditching, sawing, lifting and carrying. Brian Bell shows briefly the origins of the machinery before going into detail about its major technical advances, particularly those of the 1960s and '70s. He is dealing with a period in which the farmer's technology has been transformed in less than a lifetime, a second agrarian revolution.