Mystery Photo

After examining this image, write your response in an email message to your teacher or exchange ideas with a friend.

Developed around 1870, this horse-powered machine was pushed through a field as a way of protecting the farmer's small grain crop from . . .

This piece of farm equipment was used as a way of catching something that ate the farmer's small grain crop.

This machine was called a grasshopper catcher. Some Iowa settlers used this machine to try to catch grasshoppers that ate their crops.

Nearly every year between 1868 and 1880, plagues of grasshoppers and locusts swarmed through Iowa, especially northwest Iowa.

As the grasshopper catcher was pushed through the field, the farmer hoped the grasshoppers would fly into the mesh at the back of the canvas opening and be captured.

This machine was just one of many ways the settlers controlled the destructive insects.

Do you think it worked?

Learn more about the problems that motivated inventors to develop the grasshopper catcher.

Learn about other weird and unusual inventions at the Invention Convention.