Engineering Wonders of the World
Volume III

AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING. 297 One might expect that farmers would be satisfied with reaping and threshing machines as separate units. Both are wonderful savers of time and labour. But the Mammoth i , , c , . development or new countries Reapers. and the occurrence of special conditions have given rise to fresh needs. In California, and in some parts of Canada, where vast areas are devoted to wheat, and where the weather conditions are very reliable, the crops can be left standing until so ripe as to allow threshing to follow immediately after reaping. There is no need for the grain to mature in the shock or stack. Advantage has been taken of this. Inventors gave their attention to producing a type of machine which should thresh and sack as well as reap the crops as it travels. The machines were of great size, requiring twenty or more horses to draw them ; and their dimensions increased until it became common to encounter a “ header ”—these machines cut the ears off with as little straw as possible—having from thirty to forty mules harnessed to it. In fact, there are instances on record of as many as fifty mules being hitched to a single harvester. Finally, animal muscular strength was re- placed by steam. An ingenious inventor devised a monster steam engine which could do the work of a hundred mules, and move a harvester of truly mam- moth dimensions. One of the largest machines can cut a swathe 52 feet wide, and cover 100 acres in a ten- hour working day. (The record at present stands at 130 acres.) All the wheat growing on this enormous area is cut, threshed, and sacked by the header in one continuous opera- tion, which means that from 1,400 to 1,800 sacks of wheat are mad© ready for market by a single mech- anism between sunrise and sunset. The illustrations which we repro- duce of one of these giants may inspire the reader with a desire for further details. The machinery of the tractor is supported on three great wheels, having tyres five or ^oco" . p , . . 1X1 . 1 J motives used, six teet in width, so wide as to give the wheels the appearance of enormous steel barrels. The driving-wheels are operated through huge chains, with links of steel a foot long, and an inch thick, each tested to withstand a pull of 250 tons. The other parts are proportionately huge and strongly made. A tractor consumes six tons of coal and fifty hogsheads of water per day. In spite of its bulk it is easily handled. One man steers ; a second stokes the fur- nace ; a third operates the levers of the cutting-machine ; and a fourth ties the mouths of the bags before they drop to the ground, to be picked up by the wagons drawn by other tractors, which carry them away to the railway. Following the grain to the end of the chapter, we see it raised by machinery into the bins of an elevator, automatically sorted, and weighed. Machinery delivers it to and removes it from a vessel that bears it across the ocean ; machinery grinds it into flour, and mixes it with water and yeast for the baker’s oven. It is not going beyond the truth to say that much of the wheat which C.P.R. GRAIN ELEVATOR AT ST. JOHN’S, NEW BRUNSWICK. (Photo, by courtesy of the Canadian Government.)