Three important inventions greatly increased wheat production in the Midwest. The first was the reaper. Until the nineteenth century wheat was cut by hand with sickles and scythes. In 1834 Cyrus McCormick, an American inventor, patented a reaping machine. A threshing machine was also invented in 1834 by two brothers from Maine. The development of these machines allowed farmers to do in only a few hours the work that once took several days. The second invention was the steel plow, which replaced the iron plow. In 1837 John Deere developed a steel plow with a highly polished moldboard, which scoured itself as it turned furrows. This development made plowing easier and faster. Deere perfected his invention and in 1846 opened a factory to produce steel plows. Two years later he moved the factory to Moline, Illinois. This invention made it easier to turn over the sod, and wheat began to be cultivated throughout the Midwest. The third invention was the thresher, initially developed by A. H. Pitt of Winthrop, Maine, in the 1830s. Within ten years threshers could process twenty to twenty-five bushels of wheat per hour.
