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Threshing Tools
Threshing or thrashing is the process of loosening the edible part of grain (or other crop) from the straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain. History of threshing Through much of the important history of agriculture, threshing was time-consuming and usually laborious, with a bushel of wheat taking about an hour. In the late 18th century, before threshing was mechanized, about one-quarter of agricultural labor was devoted to it. It is likely that in the earliest days of agriculture the little grain that was raised was shelled by hand, but as the quantity increased the grain was probably beaten out with a stick, or the sheaf beaten upon the ground. An improvement on this, as the quantity further increased, was the practice of the ancient Egyptians of spreading out the loosened sheaves on a circular enclosure of hard ground, and driving oxen, sheep or other animals round and round over it ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
A Farmer
A, or a, is the first Letter (alphabet), letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''English alphabet#Letter names, a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version is often written in one of two forms: the double-storey and single-storey . The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English, ''English articles, a'' is the indefinite article, with the alternative form ''an''. Name In English, the name of the letter is the ''long A'' sound, pronounced . Its name in most other languages matches the letter's pronunciation in open syllables. History The earliest know ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pliny The Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus (AD 23/24 79), known in English as Pliny the Elder ( ), was a Roman Empire, Roman author, Natural history, naturalist, and naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and a friend of the Roman emperor, emperor Vespasian. He wrote the encyclopedic (''Natural History''), a comprehensive thirty-seven-volume work covering a vast array of topics on human knowledge and the natural world, which became an editorial model for encyclopedias. He spent most of his spare time studying, writing, and investigating natural and geographic phenomena in the field. Among Pliny's greatest works was the twenty-volume ''Bella Germaniae'' ("The History of the German Wars"), which is Lost literary work, no longer extant. ''Bella Germaniae'', which began where Aufidius Bassus' ''Libri Belli Germanici'' ("The War with the Germans") left off, was used as a source by other prominent Roman historians, including Plutarch, Tacitus, and Suetonius. Tacitus may have used ''Bella Ger ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Barn
A barn is an agricultural building usually on farms and used for various purposes. In North America, a barn refers to structures that house livestock, including cattle and horses, as well as equipment and fodder, and often grain.Allen G. Noble, ''Traditional Buildings: A Global Survey of Structural Forms and Cultural Functions'' (New York: Tauris, 2007), 30. As a result, the term barn is often qualified e.g. tobacco barn, dairy barn, cow house, sheep barn, potato barn. In the British Isles, the term barn is restricted mainly to storage structures for unthreshed cereals and fodder, the terms byre or shippon being applied to cow shelters, whereas horses are kept in buildings known as stables. In mainland Europe, however, barns were often part of integrated structures known as byre-dwellings (or housebarns in US literature). In addition, barns may be used for equipment storage, as a covered workplace, and for activities such as threshing. Etymology The word ''barn'' c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Combine Harvester
The modern combine harvester, also called a combine, is a machine designed to harvest a variety of cultivated seeds. Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labour-saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population engaged in agriculture. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, rice, oats, rye, barley, Maize, corn (maize), sorghum, millet, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers and rapeseed (canola). The separated straw (consisting of stems and any remaining leaves with limited nutrients left in it) is then either chopped onto the field and ploughed back in, or laid out in rows, ready to be Baler, baled and used for bedding and cattle feed. The name of the machine is derived from the fact that the harvester combined multiple separate harvesting operations – Reaper, reaping, threshing or winnowing and gathering – into a single process around the start of the 20th century. A combine harvester still performs its functions ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Machine
A machine is a physical system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolecules, such as molecular machines. Machines can be driven by animals and people, by natural forces such as wind and water, and by chemical, thermal, or electrical power, and include a system of mechanisms that shape the actuator input to achieve a specific application of output forces and movement. They can also include computers and sensors that monitor performance and plan movement, often called mechanical systems. Renaissance natural philosophers identified six simple machines which were the elementary devices that put a load into motion, and calculated the ratio of output force to input force, known today as mechanical advantage. Modern machines are complex systems that consist of structural elements, mechanisms and contr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ear (botany)
An ear is the grain-bearing tip part of the plant stem, stem of a cereal plant, such as wheat or maize. It can also refer to "a prominent lobe in some leaves." The ear is a Spike (botany), spike, consisting of a central stem on which tightly packed rows of flowers grow. These develop into fruits containing the edible seeds. In maize, an ear is protected by leaves called husks. Inside an ear of corn is a corncob. In some species (including wheat), unripe ears contribute significantly to photosynthesis, in addition to the leaves lower down the plant. A parasite known as ''Anguina tritici'' (ear cockle) specifically affects the ears on wheat and rye by destroying the tissues and stems during growth. The parasite has been eradicated in most countries (with the exception of North Africa and West Asia) by using the crop rotation system. References Plant morphology {{Plant-morphology-stub ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Andrew Meikle
Andrew Meikle (5 May 1719 – 27 November 1811) was a Scottish mechanical engineer credited with inventing the threshing machine, a device used to remove the outer husks from grains of wheat. He also had a hand in assisting Firbeck in the invention of the Rotherham Plough. This was regarded as one of the key developments of the British Agricultural Revolution in the late 18th century. The invention was made around 1786, although some say he only improved on an earlier design by a Scottish farmer named Leckie. Michael Stirling is said to have invented a rotary threshing machine in 1758 which for forty years was used to process all the corn on his farm at Gateside, no published works have yet been found but his son William made a sworn statement to his minister to this fact, he also gave him the details of his father's death in 1796. Earlier (c.1772), he also invented windmill " spring sails", which replaced the simple canvas designs previously used with sails made from a series ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Threshing Machine
A threshing machine or a thresher is a piece of agricultural machinery, farm equipment that separates grain seed from the plant stem, stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out. Before such machines were developed, threshing was done by hand with Flail (tool), flails: such hand threshing was very laborious and time-consuming, taking about one-quarter of agricultural labour by the 18th century. Mechanization of this process removed a substantial amount of drudgery from farm labour. The first threshing machine was invented circa 1786 by the Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle, and the subsequent adoption of such machines was one of the earlier examples of the mechanised agriculture, mechanization of agriculture. During the 19th century, threshers and mechanical reapers and reaper-binders gradually became widespread and made grain production much less laborious. Separate reaper-binders and threshers have largely been replaced by machines that combine all ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Industrialization
Industrialisation (British English, UK) American and British English spelling differences, or industrialization (American English, US) is the period of social and economic change that transforms a human group from an agrarian society into an industrial society. This involves an extensive reorganisation of an economy for the purpose of manufacturing. Industrialisation is associated with increase of Pollution, polluting industries heavily dependent on fossil fuels. With the increasing focus on sustainable development and green industrial policy practices, industrialisation increasingly includes Leapfrogging, technological leapfrogging, with direct investment in more advanced, cleaner technologies. The reorganisation of the economy has many unintended consequences both economically and socially. As industrial workers' incomes rise, markets for consumer goods and services of all kinds tend to expand and provide a further stimulus to industrial investment and economic growth. Moreo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Scottish People
Scottish people or Scots (; ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Scotland. Historically, they emerged in the Scotland in the Early Middle Ages, early Middle Ages from an amalgamation of two Celtic peoples, the Picts and Gaels, who founded the Kingdom of Scotland (or ''Kingdom of Alba, Alba'') in the 9th century. In the following two centuries, Celtic-speaking Hen Ogledd, Cumbrians of Kingdom of Strathclyde, Strathclyde and Germanic-speaking Anglo-Saxons, Angles of Northumbria became part of Scotland. In the Scotland in the High Middle Ages, High Middle Ages, during the 12th-century Davidian Revolution, small numbers of Normans, Norman nobles migrated to the Lowlands. In the 13th century, the Norse-Gaels of the Kingdom of the Isles, Western Isles became part of Scotland, followed by the Norsemen, Norse of the Northern Isles in the 15th century. In modern usage, "Scottish people" or "Scots" refers to anyone whose linguistic, cultural, family ancestral or genetic origin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Winnowing
Winnowing is a process by which chaff is separated from grain. It can also be used to remove pests from stored grain. Winnowing usually follows threshing in grain preparation. In its simplest form, it involves throwing the mixture into the air so that the wind blows away the lighter chaff, while the heavier grains fall back down for recovery. Techniques included using a winnowing fan (a shaped winnowing basket, basket shaken to raise the chaff) or using a tool (a winnowing fork or shovel) on a pile of harvested grain. In Greek culture The winnowing-fan (λίκνον [''líknon''], also meaning a "cradle") featured in the rites accorded Dionysus and in the Eleusinian Mysteries: "it was a simple agricultural implement taken over and mysticized by the religion of Dionysus," Jane Ellen Harrison remarked. ''Dionysus Liknites'' ("Dionysus of the winnowing fan") was wakened by the Dionysian women, in this instance called ''Thyia (naiad), Thyiades'', in a cave on Mount Parnassus, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flax
Flax, also known as common flax or linseed, is a flowering plant, ''Linum usitatissimum'', in the family Linaceae. It is cultivated as a food and fiber crop in regions of the world with temperate climates. In 2022, France produced 75% of the world's supply of flax. Textiles made from flax are known in English as linen and are traditionally used for bed sheets, underclothes, and table linen. Its oil is known as linseed oil. In addition to referring to the plant, the word "flax" may refer to the unspun fibers of the flax plant. The plant species is known only as a cultivated plant and appears to have been domesticated just once from the wild species '' Linum bienne'', called pale flax. The plants called "flax" in New Zealand are, by contrast, members of the genus '' Phormium''. Description Several other species in the genus ''Linum'' are similar in appearance to ''L. usitatissimum'', cultivated flax, including some that have similar blue flowers, and others with wh ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
