William Doolittle - Inventions in the Century

In countries like California, says the U.S. Commissioner of Patents in his report for 1895, "Where the climate is dry and the grain is ready for threshing as soon as it is cut, there is in general use a type of machine known as a combined harvester and thresher in which a thresher and a harvester machine of the header type are mounted on a single platform, and the heads of grain are carried directly from the harvester by elevators into the threshing machine, from which the threshed grain is delivered into bags and is then ready for shipment. Some of these machines are drawn by horses and some have a portable engine mounted on the same truck with the harvester propelling the machine, while furnishing power to drive the mechanism at the same time. Combined harvesters and threshers have been known since 1836, but they have been much improved and are now built on a much larger scale."

Flax-threshers for beating the grain from the bolls of the cured flax plant, removing the bolls, releasing and cleaning the seed, are also a modern invention.

Flax and Hemp Brakes, machines by which the woody and cellular portion of the flax is separated from the fibrous portion, produced in practical shape in the century, and flanked by the improved pullers, cutters, threshers, scutchers, hackles, carders, and rovers, have supplanted Egyptian methods of 3,000 years' standing, for preparing the flax for spinning, as well as the crude improvements of the 18th century.

After the foundation of cotton manufacture had been laid "as one of the greatest of the world's industries," in the 18th century by those five great English inventors, Kay, who invented the fly-shuttle, Hargreaves, the "Spinning Jenny," Arkwright, the water-frame, Crompton, the spinning-mule, and Cartwright, the power-loom, came Eli Whitney in 1793, a young school teacher from Massachusetts located in Georgia, who invented the cotton-gin . His crude machine, worked by a single person, could clean more cotton in a single day than could be done by a man in several months, by hand.

The enormous importance of such a machine began to be appreciated at the beginning of the century, and it set cotton up as a King whose dominion has extended across the seas.

Prior to 1871, inventions in this art were mainly directed to perfecting the structure of this primary gin. By that machine only the long staple fibre was secured, leaving the cotton seed covered with a short fibre, which with the seed was regarded as a waste product. To reclaim this short fibre and secure the seed in condition for use, have been the endeavours of many inventors during the last twenty years. These objects have been attained by a machine known as the delinter , one of the first practical forms of which appeared about 1883.

In a bulletin published by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1895, entitled, "Production and Price of Cotton for One Hundred Years," the period commences with the introduction of Whitney's saw gin, and ends with the year mentioned and with the production in that year of the largest crop the world had ever seen. No other agricultural crop commands such universal attention. Millions of people are employed in its production and manufacture. How insignificant compared with the wonder wrought by this one machine seems indeed any of the old seven wonders of the world! Although the displacement of labour occasioned by the introduction of the cotton-gin was not severely felt, as it was slave labour, yet that invention affords a good illustration of the fact that labour-saving machines increase the supply of the article, the increased supply lowers its price, the lower price increases the demand, the increased demand gives rise to more machines and develops other inventions and arts, all of which results in the employment of ten thousand people to every one thousand at work on the product originally.

When the harvest is ended and the golden stores of grains and fruits are gathered, then the question arises what shall be next done to prepare them for food and for shipment to the distant consumer.

If the cleaning of the grain and separating it from the chaff and dirt are not had in the threshing process, separate machines are employed for fanning and screening.

It was only during the 18th century that fanning mills were introduced; and it is related by Sir Walter Scott in one of his novels that some of his countrymen considered it their religious duty to wait for a natural wind to separate the chaff from the wheat; that they were greatly shocked by an invention which would raise a whirlwind in calm weather, and that they looked upon the use of such a machine as rebellion against God.

As to the grinding of the grain, the rudimentary means still exist, and are still used by rudimentary peoples, and to meet exceptional necessities; these are the primeval hollowed stone and mortar and pestle, and they too were "the mills of the Gods" in Egyptian, Hebrew and Early Greek days: the quern – that is, the upper running stone and the lower stationary grooved one – was a later Roman invention and can be found described only a century or two before the Christian era.

Crude as these means were they were the chief ones used in milling until within a century and a quarter ago.

In a very recent bright work published in London, by Richard Bennett and John Elton, on Corn Mills, etc., they say on this point: "The mill of the last century, that, by which, despite its imperfections, the production of flour rose from one of the smallest to one of the greatest and most valuable industries of the world, was essentially a structure of few parts, whether driven by water or wind, and its processes were exceedingly simple. The wheat was cleaned by a rude machine consisting of a couple of cylinders and screens, and an air blast passed through a pair of mill-stones, running very close together, in order that the greatest amount of flour might be produced at one grinding. The meal was then bolted, and the tailings, consisting of bran, middlings and adherent flour, again sifted and re-ground. It seems probable that the miller of the time had a fair notion of the high grade of flour ground from middlings, but no systematic method of procedure for its production was adopted."

The upper and the nether mill-stone is still a most useful device. The "dress," which consists of the grooves which are formed in the meeting faces of the stones, has been changed in many ways to meet the requirements in producing flour in varying degrees of fineness. Machines have been invented to make such grooves. A Swiss machine for this purpose consists of two disks carrying diamonds in their peripheries, which, being put in rapid revolution, cut parallel grooves in the face of the stone.

A great advance in milling was made both in America and Europe by the inventions of Oliver Evans. Evans was born in the State of Delaware, U.S., in 1755, and died in 1819. He was a poor boy and an apprentice to a wheelwright, and while thus engaged his inventive powers were developed. He had an idea of a land carriage propelled without animal power. At the age of 22 he invented a machine for making card teeth, which superseded the old method of making them by hand. Later he invented steam-engines and steam-boats, to which attention will hereafter be called. Entering into business with his brothers within the period extending from 1785 to 1800, he produced those inventions in milling which by the opening of the 19th century had revolutionised the art. A description of the most important of these inventions was published by him in 1795 in a book entitled The Young Millwright and Miller's Grist . Patents were granted Evans by the States of Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania in 1787, and by the U.S. Government in 1790 and 1808.