A piece of farming history is up for sale tomorrow (October 29, 2018) on a farm estate auction in Burr Oak, KS...the 1st Bi-Rotor combine ever built.
Cousins Mark Underwood and Ralph Lagergren were the inventors of this machine which was dubbed the “Dream Reaper”. The auction tomorrow is the estate auction for Mark Underwood. The cousins began testing their concept back in 1978 when they retrofitted a 1978 IHC 1480 combine. That machine is also on the auction tomorrow. Here’s a picture of it:
In 1993 Underwood and Lagergren built their XBR-2 prototype Bi-Rotor combine and by 1995 it was achieving successful results in field testing.
The Bi-Rotor never made it to market however and 17 patents were sold to John Deere in 1995.
The auction tomorrow is by Wolters Auction and Real Estate: http://www.woltersauctionandre.com.
For deeper background on the Bi-Rotor and its development, here is a cool old video by Farm Show Magazine I found out on Youtube:
Here are a couple more pics of the historic Bi-Rotor combine:
