The Champion Light Binder, manufactured by Warder, Bushnell and Glessner, as illustrated on the cover of an 1885 advertising brochure. The machines were manufactured in Springfield, Ohio and retailed through the company’s sales office in Chicago, Illinois, which was overseen by John Glessner. Champion was the well-respected trademark name of all the company’s machines, and was transferred to International Harvester when Warder, Bushnell and Glessner and four other companies merged to form that corporation in 1902.
The binder was a significant improvement over a reaper, as it not only cut the grain, but bound it into bundles or sheaves which were then left in the field for several days to dry before being collected and threshed. The first horse-drawn twine binder was marketed in 1880, so it was relatively new when this brochure was produced. The brochure notes:
“The Champion Light Binder has now passed through the harvests of 1883 and 1884, and has been subjected to the severest tests as to strength, and capacity for handling all kinds and conditions of grain. New Devices have been added so that for the harvest of 1885 the Champion Light Binder is, in the opinion of all who have examined it, as nearly a perfect grain Harvester and Binder as it is possible to make.”
Binders remained the standard equipment for harvesting in the wheat-producing areas of the United States and Canada until the advent of the grain combine in the 1930s.