Editing Reaper (section)

{{short description|Harvesting machine}}
{{for multi|the digital audio workstation|REAPER|personification of death|Grim Reaper|other uses}}
[[File:Fahr-Getreidemähmaschine 2.jpg|thumb|Typical 20th-century reaper, a tractor-drawn [[Deutz-Fahr|Fahr]] machine]]

A '''reaper''' is a [[agricultural machinery|farm implement]] that [[wikt:reap#Verb|reaps]] (cuts and often also gathers) crops at [[harvest]] when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a [[cereal]] grass, especially wheat. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reapers that were used in  Roman times in what would become modern-day France. The Gallic reaper involved a comb which collected the heads, with an operator knocking the grain into a box for later [[threshing]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.gnrtr.com/Generator.html?pi=208&cp=3|title=The History of the Gallic Reaper|last=Chuksin|first=Petr|website=History of Gallic Reaper}}</ref> 

Most modern mechanical reapers cut [[Poaceae|grass]]; most also gather it, either by [[windrow]]ing or picking it up. Modern machines that not only cut and gather the grass but also [[threshing|thresh]] its seeds (the [[grain]]), [[winnowing|winnow]] the grain, and deliver it to a truck or wagon, are called [[combine harvester]]s or simply combines, and are the engineering descendants of earlier reapers.

[[Hay]] is harvested somewhat differently from grain; in modern [[haymaking]], the machine that cuts the grass is called a hay [[mower]] or, if integrated with a [[conditioner (farming)|conditioner]], a mower-conditioner. As a [[manual labour|manual task]], cutting of both grain and hay may be called reaping, involving [[scythe]]s, [[sickle]]s, and [[grain cradle|cradles]], followed by differing downstream steps. Traditionally all such cutting could be called reaping, although a distinction between ''reaping'' of grain grasses and ''mowing'' of hay grasses has long existed; it was only after a decade of attempts at combined grain reaper/hay mower machines (1830s to 1840s) that designers of mechanical implements began resigning them to separate classes.<ref name="McCormick_1931_pp59-60">{{Harvnb|McCormick|1931|pp=59–60}}.</ref>

Mechanical reapers substantially changed agriculture from their appearance in the 1830s until the 1860s through 1880s, when they evolved into related machines, often called by different names (self-raking reaper, harvester, [[reaper-binder]], grain binder, binder), that collected and bound the [[sheaf (agriculture)|sheaves]] of grain with [[wire]] or [[twine]].<ref name="McCormick_1931_pp67-72">{{Harvnb|McCormick|1931|pp=67–72}}.</ref>