In the Beginning

Scottish millwright Andrew Meikle is credited with the introduction around 1786 of a combined thresher/winnower, in which both mechanisms were powered by a belt from a common drive pulley. When shocks of grain were fed into the machine, they passed between the corrugated surfaces of a series of rollers, forcing the kernels out of the heads. Once past these rollers, grain was carried on a conveyor to a fanning mill, which blew away any remaining chaff. Soon after this, an English inventor copying Meikle’s design created a machine which separated the grain by passing it between a drum or cylinder and a concave surface, both of which were fitted with iron projections. This “English patent”quickly formed the basis of future technological developments — largely because less care was required when feeding grain into the cylinder-concave surfaces of the English design, than into a machine with corrugated rollers.

Catalogue image of the cylinder and concave from a threshing machine

One horse treadmill manufactured by La Compagnie Desjardins of Sainte-André de Kamouraska, P.Q. (680861)

Although most threshers were still hand-cranked, they could also be driven by a horse treadmill or sweep. The action of a horse walking on the treadmill's moving inclined platform drove a large pulley on the side of the device, which was outfitted with a leather drive belt. Although one-horse treadmills such as the one manufactured by La Compagnie Desjardins of St. Andre de Kamouraska P.Q. (680861) were most common, it was possible to purchase large mills accommodating two or three horses walking abreast. In the case of horse sweeps such as those manufactured by Sawyer-Massey, horses walked around a central device containing a gear box, which transferred power to the threshing machine by means of a tumble shaft or rod.

Sweep in Sawyer-Massey Catalogue