The seventh patent issued
by the United States, to Samuel Mulliken of Philadelphia, was for
a threshing machine. The portable horse-power treadmill, invented
in 1830 by Hiram A. and John A. Pitts of Winthrop, Maine, was
presently coupled with a thresher, or "separator," and this
outfit, with its men and horses, moving from farm to farm, soon
became an autumn feature of every neighborhood. The treadmill was
later on succeeded--by the traction engine, and the apparatus now
in common use is an engine which draws the greatly improved
threshing machine from farm to farm, and when the destination is
reached, furnishes the power to drive the thresher. Many of these
engines are adapted to the use of straw as fuel.
Another development was the combination harvester and thresher
used on the larger farms of the West. This machine does not cut
the wheat close to the ground, but the cutter-bar, over
twenty-five feet in length, takes off the heads. The wheat is
separated from the chaff and automatically weighed into sacks,
which are dumped as fast as two expert sewers can work. The
motive power is a traction engine or else twenty to thirty
horses, and seventy-five acres a day can be reaped and threshed.
Often another tractor pulling a dozen wagons follows and the
sacks are picked up and hauled to the granary or elevator.
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