• Gasoline Tractor
• On the Farm
• Early Farm Machinery
• Iowa Innovators
• The Science and Technology of Agriculture

What would have happened if Patrick Lawler had been successful selling his corn picker?

 

• Husking Corn, 1939
• Mechanical Corn Picker
• Cultivating corn
• Alternating Strips of Alfalfa and Corn, 1999
• Cultivating corn
• Harrowing and corn planting
• Farm Machinery Production
• Early Corn Picking

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Reading Tip: Reading for Meaning
While reading, look for the purpose of the article. What is this article's purpose?

 

• See the development of farm machinery and agricultural technology in this timeline from the 17th Century to present.
• This wagon, pulled by a team, was a typical scene on Iowa farms when Corn was still picked by hand.
• Take a look at these amazing pictures and descriptions about the early methods of plowing.
• Get a close-up view of this combine as it harvests soybeans.
• Can you imagine plowing the prairie with this farm implement?
• Stopping for lunch during haying was a time to rest, eat and plan the rest of the work day.
• Corn refining means to separate the corn into components and convert them into other products.
• So what's so important about corn? You'd be surprised.

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Corn Picker

Patrick J. Lawler was a farm kid who didn’t like the hard work of farming. Picking corn by hand left him exhausted. But he liked tinkering with machines and dreamed of an easier way to get the job done.

By 1880 Patrick had drawn his ideas for a corn picking machine on paper. With the help of John F. Barry, a lawyer from Chicago, Patrick built a working model of his dream. Then on a sunny afternoon in 1885 a crowd gathered at the Lawler farm near Wall Lake to watch the strange machine pick corn. Neighbors were amazed as the horse-drawn picker poured out a stream of husked ears.

A Chicago manufacturing company offered Patrick money for the rights to produce his machine, but he and John Barry wanted to manufacture the corn picker themselves. They purchased a blacksmith shop and built two machines but were unable to sell them. Patrick Lawler's first corn picker was sold for scrap in 1932.

Adapted from an article printed in The Goldfinch 20, No. 1 (Fall 1998). Iowa City: State Historical Society of Iowa.
© State Historical Society of Iowa

 

1. Corn Picker