Elise Bergerson. Picking up from where yesterdayâs interview left off, Jay Wilds continued to speak with The Intercept about Serial. Wilds opened up about meeting with Sarah Koenig during her reporting for the podcast and why he decided against appearing on Serial to present his side of the story.
Cyrus McCormick wanted to design equipment that would simplify farmers' work. In 1831, he invented a horse-drawn reaper to harvest grain and started selling it to others in 1840. It allowed the farmer to do five times the amount of harvesting in a day than they could by hand using a scythe.
John Deere was an Illinois blacksmith and manufacturer. Early in his career, Deere and an associate designed a series of farm plows. In 1837, on his own, John Deere designed the first cast steel plow that greatly assisted the Great Plains farmers. The large plows made for cutting the tough prairie ground were called grasshopper plows. The plow was made of wrought iron and had a steel share that could cut through sticky soil without clogging.