Скачать или смотреть The Innovation They Had to Hide From John Deere — International's Axial-Flow Combines

In the late 1950s, International Harvester engineers locked themselves inside a garage with frosted windows at their East Moline, Illinois facility. Just one mile away sat John Deere's combine plant. What IH was developing had to remain absolutely secret, because it would make every conventional combine obsolete.

For nearly two decades, a small team worked on rotary threshing technology that would revolutionize grain harvesting. Conventional combines relied on straw walkers and gravity. The new Axial-Flow design used a single longitudinal rotor that threshed and separated grain in one continuous operation.

When International Harvester finally unveiled the 1440 and 1460 models in 1977, competitors scrambled to respond. John Deere reportedly spent over $120 million on rotary development during the 1970s. By 2013, over 160,000 Axial-Flow combines had been produced, more than all other major rotary manufacturers combined.

This is the story of the engineers, the secret development, and the technology that changed farming forever.