Planters for corn came somewhat later.

Machines to plant wheat successfully were unsuited to corn, which must be planted less profusely than wheat.
The American pioneers had only a sickle or a scythe with which to cut their grain.

The addition to the scythe of wooden fingers, against which the grain might lie until the end of the swing, was a natural step, and seems to have been taken quite independently in several places, perhaps as early as 1803.

Grain cradles are still used in hilly regions and in those parts of the country where little grain is grown.
The first attempts to build a machine to cut grain were made in England and Scotland, several of them in the eighteenth century; and in 1822 Henry Ogle, a schoolmaster in Rennington, made a mechanical reaper, but the opposition of the laborers of the vicinity, who feared loss of employment, prevented further development.

In 1826, Patrick Bell, a young Scotch student, afterward a Presbyterian minister, who had been moved by the fatigue of the harvesters upon his father's farm in Argyllshire, made an attempt to lighten their labor.