Harvest, the most critical phase of the farming year, has always required full mobilisation of resources for maximum effort during the short period when crop ripeness and suitable weather conditions coincide. Mechanical means of assistance were first used, as far as we know, in Roman times but the story of harvesting machinery really belongs to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. About the author Roy Brigden is Keeper of the Museum of English Rural Life at the University of Reading. Other Shire titles by this author: Agricultural Hand Tools Ploughs and Ploughing