For more than two hundred years America has relied on its agriculture for subsistence, profitability, and growth. Farm-raised inventors have historically increased productivity and reduced their personal toil by inventing the forerunners of the modern machinery utilized in today's global farming activities.Jerome Increase Case entered his personal farming association in 1819 in the eastern state of New York. Born and raised in the local farming community, his earliest interests centered on crop activities. He really didn't have a choice in the matter, as America was primarily a farm community at the time. The wheat harvest was hand cut with handheld scythes. Manual labor was utilized to beat the harvested wheat to remove the grain. One farmer could produce a half dozen bushels of produce a day, thus grain acreages were small. When Case was 16, he and his father witnessed a demonstration of a semi-mechanized thresher, developed and patented by Andrew Meikle in 1788. His father was so impressed by this unit that he applied for a franchise to market them. For the next five years, Case demonstrated and operated the machine on the farm and for his father's clients.
Years later in 1831, the farming world was turned upside down with the development of the first mechanical reaper invented by a country gentleman, Cyrus Hall McCormick. Many historians agree that this single achievement changed farming forever.
In his early 20s, Case left Oswego County, New York, to make his way to Wisconsin and begin a career as a thresherman. To meet expenses, he sold five groundhog thresher machines and kept a personal unit for his own use. Case utilized his machine as a production rig and as a working prototype of a future machine he planned to build. In his mind, he envisioned a machine that could be a separator and thresher combination, so the straw would move to one end, with the grain falling in bags underneath.
Arriving in Rochester, Wisconsin, in 1842, he continued his upgrades and improvements to the groundhog device and after dozens of successful demonstrations, Case decided to produce his own unit. His earlier career of custom harvesting had come to an end.
Though Rochester had a small manufacturing base, Case couldn't get the necessary waterpower rights to establish a factory. Looking east to Racine, he established the Jerome Increase Case Machinery Company in 1843. Racine offered the new producer the advantages of newer manufacturing facilities and established transportation systems.
By 1847, Case built a three-story brick facility that became the hub of his farm equipment business. In 1848, the company was producing 100 machines a year, though meeting only half of its orders. Threshing grain established Case in the agriculture business, and he operated the company as a sole proprietor until 1863. The war of succession forced the company to look for investors, as cash flow was slow. After taking on three additional partners, Case was soon reorganized as J.I. Case & Company.