Claas celebrates 75 years of the combine harvester in Europe in 2011. In 1936 August Claas unveiled a tractor-trailed machine that he had developed at his plant in Harsewinkel. This 'reaper-binder' delivered a flow of grain as it traversed the field, with the material transported away in sacks – a revolution in European agriculture was born.
A number of American combine harvesters, also tractor-trailed, had been used in Europe as early as the 1920s, but these machines were failures. European crops proved unsuitable for the American machines, which were used on the less demanding harvesting conditions of the American Mid-West. A widespread opinion soon developed in Europe that a combine harvester approach as pioneered in the United States would not be suitable for European cereals harvesting. Until that point, cereals in Germany had been chopped manually by scythe and were dried in sheaves, or placed or stored in lofts to dry. Stationary threshing machines came into use later, which were used to separate the grain from the stalks and heads.
August Claas founded an agricultural machinery company together with his brothers Theo and Franz in 1913. He was was resolute in his belief that European cereals could be suitable for combine harvesting. His son Helmut Claas recalls: "My father, together with Walter Brenner, an assistant of Professor Vormfelde at the University of Bonn, had developed a prototype at the beginning of the 1930s. It was a machine built around the Lanz Bulldog, making a highly modern combine harvester with a cutterbar at the front."
The prototype was officially showcased to the German agricultural machinery industry. However, nobody showed any interest. "In that case, we'll go it alone", said August Claas, vowing to continue the design. A breakthrough came in 1936 with a trailed combine harvester with side-mounted cutterbar. Claas unveiled his model before a large number of highly sceptical farmers from the central German regions; the first fully functional reaper-binder to be manufactured in Europe. Daily harvesting output was 600 hundredweight (30 tonnes) of wheat. In the following six years, a further 1450 machines were manufactured.
The first self-propelled combine harvester (with an integrated power source) was launched by Claas in 1953. The latest model in the Claas Lexion combine harvester range is capable of harvesting up to 100 tonnes of wheat per hour. Modern machines can be equipped with a cutterbar up to 12 metres wide, are precision-operated with GPS-guided steering, can hold up to 12,000 litres of grain in an integrated grain tank, and cost up to €500,000.

Today, 75 years on from the invention of the combine harvester, Claas remains the market leader in Europe – around one in three combines sold across Europe is manufactured in Harsewinkel.
Claas is seeking stories and experiences from users of its combines, which will be used to create a book. To take part visit www.mycombine.claas.com