Doc, when I worked at the AC dealer, more accurately the AGCO dealer, back in the early 90's, the older mechanics and the owners told me that some time in the 50's, AC sent up engineers to their shop to test corn combining with an A and two row head. Peterson brothers, the dealership owners, farmed a bunch of acres too and so the testing was on their farm as I remember it told. It was a cold late harvest with wet corn and they were having lots of trouble breaking up cobs. It was so cold and the A had no cab, they had to take turns each round running the combine. At night the combine would go back to the shop but they just couldn't stop the cobs from breaking up. One night after the engineers left for their motel, Pickle Johnson and I think a couple of the Peterson brothers.... maybe Kermit and Arland.... don't quite remember, came up with fashioning angle irons to bolt in between the rasp bars. They didn't say anything to the engineers the next day. They took the combine out to the field and it was a night and day difference. The engineers asked them what they did and that's how the filler bars came about..... that's what I was told anyhow.

PS the engineers were from down south and really didn't like a Minnesota winter and the corn was especially good that year here too and one of them told the Peterson brothers that they came up here to harvest corn not trees!