In 1848, John Nichols opened a blacksmith shop in Battle Creek, Michigan. In the blacksmith shop, John Nichols began making various farm tools for local farmers. He built his first thresher/separator in 1852. The business was successful from the start, so successful that some time in the 1850s he took on a partner by the name of David Shepard. Together they formed a partnership known as Nichols, Shepard and Company which manufactured farm machinery, steam engines and mill machinery. The first thresher/separator of small grains (largely wheat and oats) was developed in about 1831 by the Pitts brothers—Hiram and John Pitts of Buffalo, New York. However, this early thresher, called the "ground hog," was quite unlike the conventional thresher/separators that developed since that time. For inst