John Ridley (inventor) - Controversy Regarding The Inventor of The Stripper

Controversy Regarding The Inventor of The Stripper

For more than 140 years an argument has continued, off and on (and sometimes acrimoniously) over the invention of the South Australian wheat "stripper". Some, such as G. L. Sutton (1937), have claimed that the real inventor was a farmer, John Wrathall Bull (1804-1886), and that Bull's idea was stolen and then commercially exploited by the Hindmarsh flour-miller John Ridley (1806-1887). Indeed, following Sutton, most modern Australian agricultural and general historians have accepted this view without question, and incorporated it into their own works. Ridley and his supporters, however, always staunchly denied the charge (which was originally laid by J.W. Bull in 1845), insisting that Ridley himself was the sole and unaided inventor.

Although it was claimed that the machine was invented in principle by John Wrathall Bull, none disputed that Ridley was its first practical producer. In 1844 he was awarded a special prize by the Agricultural and Horticultural Society and in 1858 he was thanked by the South Australian parliament for a service that had helped to make possible the vast increase of wheat-growing in the province.

The rival claims of Bull and Ridley to the title of inventor of the stripper were the subject of long controversy. In 1843 Ridley had the limelight. The controversy was revived in 1875. Supported by influential friends and by mechanics who had made the original harvesting machine, Bull petitioned parliament in 1880 for a grant in recognition of his invention. After long inquiry he was given £250 in 1882 "for services in improving agricultural machinery".

Bull claimed that he was the real inventor of Ridley's reaping machine, his claims are set out in his volume Early Experiences of Colonial Life in South Australia. Bull sent in a model that was rejected by the committee, and his contention was that Ridley had seen his model and constructed his machine on its principles. Ridley, a man of the great probity, denied this, and his denial is borne out by the fact that his machine had had two successful trials within two months of the models being exhibited. In those days a machine could be constructed in Adelaide only by primitive methods, and it would have been virtually impossible to make a machine, overcome all the practical difficulties of adjustment, and have it in working order in so little time.

Bull devised an idea for a machine based on the comb and beater principle which reaped and threshed on his Mount Barker farm in 1842. He had the assistance of his good friend, brother-in-law and respected colonist Thomas Hudson Beare to create a working model for exhibition at the Corn Exchange committee meeting in 1843. "Having no wish for any personal gain, he donated his design for the good of the colony". "Much to Bull's surprise, John Ridley, (who exhibited no machine, or any proposals for one, at the Corn Exchange committee meeting), later emerged with a machine which was based on similar principles to those designed by Bull". Many other colonists backed Bull in testimonials and letters which appear in his book and also papers of the day.

In Ridley's final letter to the Adelaide Register written in 1886, he said that the first suggestion of his machine had come from a notice of a Roman invention given in John Claudius Loudon's Encyclopaedia of Agriculture, and that "from no other source whatever did I receive the least help or suggestion".

Both Bagshaw and John Dunn, who were involved in the manufacture and testing of Ridley's prototype, supported his claim.

More recent work by L. J. Jones presented at the Second National Conference on Engineering Heritage in 1985 states:

It will be shown that certain purely engineering considerations can significantly assist in settling this matter; these have not been taken into account previously. Further, these engineering factors, taken together with some additional historical evidence recently brought forward, now enable us to see that Ridley was unjustly accused, and that in fact he is fully entitled to the credit for the "stripper's" invention as well as for its introduction.