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With respect to jrsn, his source loosely paraphrases two paragraphs written by Nuefeld, in "A Global Corporation� In my reading of the source material for the Wild Harvest Magazine article, there are some small liberties taken. From pages 36-37 of "A Global Corporation" "In 1924 Headlie S. Taylor developed the 12-foot Sunshine auto header in Australia for the H. V. McKay Company, which probably was the first self-propelled combine to be more or less regularly manufactured. It was sold in Argentina where it may have encouraged local experimentation with the self propelled idea. Tom Carroll, also an Australian, joined the Massey-Harris distributor in Argentina in 1911, saw local experimentation with combines and began a long career designing such machines for Massy-Harris." ... "Carroll undertook the work (combine design) in Toronto and had a prototype in the field in Argentina in eight months. The historically significant #20 self-propelled combine was born." ... "For his work on combine development Tom Carrol was awarded the Cyrus Hall McCormick gold medal by the American Society of Agricultural Engineers in 1958." There is a whole chapter on H.V.McKay where Nuefled talks about how McKay did the initial development of the self-propelled combine. You must also note that tractor drawn and horse drawn combines were already around. So no I would not say that Tom McKay was the Father of the self-propelled combine. He certainly was a very prominent innovator upon the new technology. Jeff-oh
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