The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year Volume 2 - Softcover

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1867 edition. Excerpt: ... Imrnnmnurs.---Cultivation by the steam engine was the paramount feature of this department; one gallery and part of another being occupied by two rival systems of steam-ploughing mechanism. Fowler contributed the steam engines, with their wire ropes, ploughs, and grubbers, of which about 150 sets are now at work in this and other countries. Here, too, were the engine, windlass, grubbers, and new balance ploughs of the Howards, of Bedford; their steam cultivator and new implements for the hay harvest. America has produced a greater variety of reaping and mowing machines than we English have done; most of our new notions in knife, or gearing, or delivery, having come a voyage across the Atlantic. In the United States Court we accordingly found several ingeuuities of this order. A striking object among these inventions wasthe reaper of Mr. M'Cormick, which advertises itself as one of 40,000 made and sold in one shop. The platform is of a quadrant figure; the reel has but three, instead of four blades, the place of the fourth being occupied by a rake, which by a very peculiar but really simple and easy movement is made to sweep over the latform, delivering the cut corn at one side. hfr. Aveling, of Rochester, showed his simplycontrived and practically-successful locomotive for common roads, of which, it is said, forty are already in constant use. Denmark contributed a novelty in the shape of long shallow iron pans for holding milk in large dairies. A screw at the farther end enables the pan to be slightly raised for emptying, and abroad blade of thin wood reaching across the pan and supported by rollers running along the edges of the pan, is drawn from end to end when the cream is to be skimmed off the milk. In the Australian Court was...