John Ridley (inventor) - Career in Australia

Career in Australia

On arrival in South Australia he bought a piece of land at Hindmarsh close to Adelaide, took over the flour-mill of the South Australian Company, installed the first steam engine (a Watt's Beam) in South Australia able to cut wood and grind meal, and began growing wheat at Hindmarsh. Foreseeing that the heavy spending by governor George Gawler would lead to depression and increased rural production, Ridley let his farm and devoted his time to seeking grain for his mill, purchasing land, and investing in the developing copper-mine at Burra. Being much interested in mechanical inventions, he also spent some time on a horizontal windmill to be used for raising water. It was said of him at this period that if his child cried in the night, his first thought would be how to make an apparatus for rocking the cradle.

By 1843 the colony's expanding wheat crop threatened to exceed the capacity of the work force available to harvest it. Ridley gave much time to the problem of devising a mechanical method of harvesting the wheat and building a reaper based on a woodcut in John Claudius Loudon's An Encyclopaedia of Agriculture (3rd ed., London, 1835). In September 1843 the corn exchange committee offered a prize of £40 to anyone submitting a model or plans of a reaper of which the committee would approve. Ridley did not compete because his machine was nearing completion in the factory of John Stokes Bagshaw. On 23 September 1843 it was reported that several models and plans had been submitted, but no machine had been exhibited which the committee felt justified in recommending for general adoption. In October Ridley's machine was ready for its first tests, and a month later a rebuilt machine was successfully tested on his tenant's crop, reaping 70 acres (28 ha) in a week. On 18 November 1843 the Adelaide Observer announced that "a further trial of Mr Ridley's machine has established its success". Over the next year he planned the improvement and manufacture of the machine, in 1845 he made seven machines, and by 1850 over 50 machines were operating in the colony and others had been exported.