Stump the German

[Eva Elisabeth]

Well done, Rob! I came upon this question because a quizz question in an Austrian puzzle book asked who invented the reaper, and the answer was a Scottish minister in 1826. I, of course thought it referred to McCormick and the authors got the year wrong, also I had never read McCormick was a minister. So I checked it out and found that indeed a Scottish minister named Patrick Bell invented the very first reaper but didn't care about a patent. And obviously McCormick also wanted Bell "out of the race":
https://www.scientificamerican.com/artic...852-11-13/
Here's a photo of Bell's 1826 reaper:
https://www.flickr.com/photos/bobloveloc...hotostream