
The multi crop thresher machine is an evolution, rather than an invention,and to you men and those before you who have concerned themselves with the threshing of grain, belongs a large share of the credit for the modern thresher as it exists today.The thresher, unlike the automobile, was born of necessity
rather than from a desire to produce a machine that would perform
an old task in a new way.
‘There was Corn in Egypt’ and Egyptian civilization grew, and flourished, and perpetuated itself while many other nations were relying upon flocks and herds which could not be conserved against future needs.
Grain was something that produced wealth and security and men became agrarians rather than hunters and herdsmen. Grain production grew apace, in fact it accumulated to the point where there was an unthreshable surplus. The hand could not rub fast enough the slow moving oxen could not tread out the crop and even the flail failed in its designed purpose.
The grain raiser rather than the manufacturer, turned his attention toward a machine that would separate the wheat from the straw. To such men as Meikle and Menzies belong the credit of making a start towards perfecting a corn thresher back in the 18th century, but the results of their efforts while spelling progress, did not anywhere near meet the requirements.
A Scotchman named Michael Menzies was one of the first of a splendid group of men who experimented with threshing machines and his efforts, while not crowned with complete success, are worthy of notice as paving the way for subsequent experiments. His machine,which was brought out in 1732, consisted of a number of flails attached to a rotating cylinder driven by water power. It was capable of doing a considerable amount of work in a short time and attracted a good deal of attention. The frequent breaking of the flails, however, demonstrated the fact that the really successful corn sheller machine would not make use of the flail motion in its original form.
The next threshing machine of which we have record was also invented by a Scotch farmer who succeeded in improving upon the Menzies’ machine by constructing a rotary cylinder armed with beaters which for the first time correctly applied the principle of flail threshing to a power driven machine. His machine consisted of a vertical shaft supporting four cross arms all enclosed in a
vertical cylinder. The grain was fed in at the top of the cylinder and the rapidly revolving arms beat the grain out of the straw during its downward passage. Both grain and chaff fell in a pile atthe bottom and separation was afterward performed by hand in the usual fashion of the time by winnowing.
Twenty years later an attempt was made to solve the problem by using the rubbing principle of separating the grain from the straw. This machine employed a large fluted or corrugated cylinder which revolved between a series of small corrugated rollers which were held forcibly against the large cylinder by means of stout springs
whose tension could be varied to suit the conditions of the grain.
The friction between the corrugations of the rollers and the straw was depended upon to remove the grain from the heads. This machine was experimented with for some time with the hope that it would solve the problem. However, it, too, was found impractical, being slow in operation and liable to crack the grain. The rubbing or frictional machine appeared after these experiments to be valueless and again inventors turned their attention to the flail principle,which had been all but proven successful.