Stripper (agriculture)

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Stripper was a type of harvesting machine common in Australia in the late 19th and early 20th century. John Ridley is now accepted as its inventor, though John Wrathall Bull argued strongly for the credit. [1]

John Ridley (inventor) Australian inventor

John Ridley was an English miller, inventor, landowner, investor, farming machinery manufacturer, farmer and preacher who lived in Australia between 1839 and 1853. He is best known for the development, manufacture and invention of "Ridley's Stripper", a machine that removed the heads of grain, with the threshing being done later by a separate machine. The suburb of Ridleyton in the city of Adelaide, Australia was named for him.

John Wrathall Bull was an early settler, inventor and colonial author of South Australia.

Contents

Description

The stripper plucks the ears of grain (generally wheat) without winnowing, and leaving the straw standing. The first strippers were drawn by bullocks and consisted of a large, wheeled, box-like machine with a row of spiked prongs in front and with a long pole at the back of the machine for steering. It had the advantage over the early reaper machines in being able to reap more quickly (of benefit in a hot climate) and having fewer components subject to wearing out. [2]

Wheat Cereal grain

Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain which is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus Triticum; the most widely grown is common wheat.

Winnowing method of separating grain from chaff

Wind winnowing is an agricultural method developed by ancient cultures for separating grain from chaff. It is also used to remove hay and chaff or other pests from stored grain. Threshing, the loosening of grain or seeds from the husks and straw, is the step in the chaff-removal process that comes before winnowing.

Ox common bovine draft and riding animal

An ox, also known as a bullock in Australia and India, is a bovine trained as a draft animal or riding animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration makes the animals more docile. Cows or bulls may also be used in some areas.

The first strippers were improved by adding a beater to knock the heads off the stems. The machines became headers. Later headers had reciprocating cutter bars at the back of the combs to cut the stems just short of the heads [3] . [4]

A stripper-harvester also winnowed the grain, removing the chaff.

Chaff

Chaff is the dry, scaly protective casings of the seeds of cereal grain, or similar fine, dry, scaly plant material such as scaly parts of flowers, or finely chopped straw. Chaff is indigestible by humans, but livestock can eat it and in agriculture it is used as livestock fodder, or is a waste material ploughed into the soil or burned.

Notable manufacturers were Sunshine Harvester, J. and D. Shearer and Mellor Bros. (who specialised in "bike strippers", ie. light enough to be drawn by a bicycle).

Evolution of the header

The Gallic reaper that is seen in Roman times, in the first three centuries of the current era led to the stripper developed in the 19th century. The Gallic reaper had a comb at the front to collect grain heads. An operator would knock the heads into a tray for collection. [5] The stripper developed in South Australia used the principles, with a comb at the front, using a mechanical beater to knock the heads off. Later innovations were including a cutter bar similar to the binder reaper and an elevator to lift the heads into a storage bin for later threshing. The combined header-harvester added the winnower to thresh the grain from the heads.

Reaper harvesting machine

A reaper is a farm implement or person that reaps crops at harvest when they are ripe. Usually the crop involved is a cereal grass. The first documented reaping machines were Gallic reaper that was used in modern-day France during Roman times. The Gallic reaper involved a comb which collected the heads, with an operator knocking the grain into a box for later threshing.

Sources

The Australian National Dictionary Oxford University Press 1988 ISBN   0 19 554736 5

Related Research Articles

Threshing machine agricultural machine

A threshing machine or thresher is a piece of farm equipment that threshes grain, that is, it removes the seeds from the stalks and husks. It does so by beating the plant to make the seeds fall out.

Combine harvester machine that harvests grain crops

The modern combine harvester, or simply combine, is a versatile machine designed to efficiently harvest a variety of grain crops. The name derives from its combining three separate harvesting operations—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers and canola. The separated straw, left lying on the field, comprises the stems and any remaining leaves of the crop with limited nutrients left in it: the straw is then either chopped, spread on the field and ploughed back in or baled for bedding and limited-feed for livestock.

A mower is a person or machine that cuts (mows) grass or other plants that grow on the ground. Usually mowing is distinguished from reaping, which uses similar implements, but is the traditional term for harvesting grain crops, e.g. with reapers and combines.

Reaper-binder harvesting machine

The reaper-binder, or binder, is a farm implement that improved upon the simple reaper. The binder was invented in 1872 by Charles Baxter Withington, a jeweler from Janesville, Wisconsin. In addition to cutting the small-grain crop, a binder also 'binds' the stems into bundles or sheaves. These sheaves are usually then 'shocked' into A-shaped conical stooks, resembling small tipis, to allow the grain to dry for several days before being picked up and threshed.

Threshing process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain from the scaly, inedible chaff that surrounds it

Threshing is the process of loosening the edible part of grain from the husks and straw to which it is attached. It is the step in grain preparation after reaping and before winnowing, which separates the grain from the chaff. Threshing does not remove the bran from the grain.

Swather harvesting machine

A swather, or windrower, is a farm implement that cuts hay or small grain crops and forms them into a windrow. "Swather" is predominantly the North American term for these machines. In Australia and other parts of the world, they are called "windrowers". They aid harvesting by speeding up the process of drying the crop down to a moisture content suitable for harvesting and storage.

Mechanised agriculture agriculture using powered machinery

Mechanised agriculture is the process of using agricultural machinery to mechanise the work of agriculture, greatly increasing farm worker productivity. In modern times, powered machinery has replaced many farm jobs formerly carried out by manual labour or by working animals such as oxen, horses and mules.

Threshing board

A threshing board is an obsolete farm implement used to separate cereals from their straw; that is, to thresh. It is a thick board, made with a variety of slats, with a shape between rectangular and trapezoidal, with the frontal part somewhat narrower and curved upward and whose bottom is covered with lithic flakes or razor-like metal blades.

Grain cradle kind of scythe

A grain cradle or cradle, is a modification to a standard scythe to keep the cut grain stems aligned. The cradle scythe has an additional arrangement of fingers attached to the snaith to catch the cut grain so that it can be cleanly laid down in a row with the grain heads aligned for collection and efficient threshing.

Laverda is a manufacturer of combine harvesters and hay equipment, based in Breganze, Italy. It was founded in 1873 by Pietro Laverda to produce farming implements in the Province of Vicenza. 1956 was the year the first self-propelled Laverda combine, the M 60, was manufactured. Laverda formed a partnership with Fiat in 1981, and would be a part of that company for some 20 years.

Gleaner Manufacturing Company company

The Gleaner Manufacturing Company is an American manufacturer of combine harvesters. Gleaner has been a popular brand of combine harvester particularly in the Midwestern United States for many decades, first as an independent firm, and later as a division of Allis-Chalmers. The Gleaner brand continues today under the ownership of AGCO.

The All-Crop harvester or All-Crop combine was a tractor-drawn, PTO-driven combine harvesters made by Allis-Chalmers from the mid-1930s to the early 1960s. Aside from small grains, these harvesters were able to harvest some flowers, as well as various grasses and legume crops for seed.

Agricultural machinery machinery used for growing food

Agricultural machinery is machinery used in farming or other agriculture. There are many types of such equipment, from hand tools and power tools to tractors and the countless kinds of farm implements that they tow or operate. Diverse arrays of equipment are used in both organic and nonorganic farming. Especially since the advent of mechanised agriculture, agricultural machinery is an indispensable part of how the world is fed.

John Stokes Bagshaw

John Stokes Bagshaw was a manufacturer of agricultural machinery in South Australia.

Sheaf (agriculture) bundle of grain

A sheaf is a bunch of cereal-crop stems bound together after reaping, traditionally by sickle, later by scythe or, after its introduction in 1872, by mechanical reaper-binder

The Selbstfahrer is the first self-propelled combine harvester by Claas. It was produced 19.465 times from 1952 to 1963. The German name Selbstfahrer literally means Self-propeller and in the German agricultural language, it refers to a combine harvester or agricultural machine that can propel itself. Initially, the name of the Selbstfahrer was Hercules; due to an already registered trademark with the name Hercules, the combine harvester was renamed SF for Selbstfahrer in 1953. In contemporary brochures, the Selbstfahrer is called Claas Selbstfahrer Type S.F.55. It was targeted at agricultural contractors and large farms in Europe. In 1961, the Selbstfahrer was succeeded by the Matador. However, it was kept in production until 1963.

References

  1. ↑ Jones, LJ (1985), "Engineering Considerations in an Historical Argument – the Ridley-Bull 'Stripper' Controversy", Second National Conference on Engineering Heritage "The Value of Engineering Heritage": Preprints of Papers, Institution of Engineers, Australia: 79–84, ISBN   978-0-85825-250-9
  2. ↑ "Stripper versus Harvester". The Leader . Melbourne: National Library of Australia. 18 May 1918. p. 8. Retrieved 27 July 2013.
  3. ↑ Read, Robert L (1990). Manual of Australian Agriculture. Sydney: Butterworths. p. 683. ISBN   0 409 30946 X.
  4. ↑ "Sunshine header-harvester". Museum of Applied Arts and Science. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
  5. ↑ Chuksin, Petr (23 January 2006). "History of the Gallic Reaper". History of Gallic Reaper Evolution Agriculture. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
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