One of the big stories in the Central Valley these days is how technology is revolutionizing agriculture. Specifically, automation and robotics. But it’s not necessarily a new story. Today on KVPR’s Central Valley Roots, a machine that marked a technological revolution, that went from Fresno all the way to the Smithsonian.
Picking cotton by hand was difficult, exhausting and extremely labor-intensive. It has a long history in America, one rooted in slavery, then sharecroppers, and migrant laborers. Many of those Dust Bowl refuges who came to California during the Great Depression went on to pick cotton in the San Joaquin Valley’s fields.
For over a century, inventors had searched for a mechanical solution. In the 1930s, John Rust patented the first working self-propelled cotton picker. But his design had problems and his company went bankrupt. Enter the International Harvester Corporation. Using one of their Farmall tractors as the base platform, they developed the first commercially successful cotton picker in 1943. And one of the earliest machines was purchased by Fresno’s Producers Cotton Oil Company.
Known as Old Red, it worked the fields of the Valley until 1959, producing 8,000 bales. Old Red was later restored, and in 1970 Producers donated it to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where you’ll still find it today in Washington, D.C.
