9 articles
Billhook
Billhook: curved-bladed European hand tool with inner cutting edge for hedgelaying, coppicing, pruning, and cutting small woody material; distinct from the machete, with regional British patterns and Roman-era ancestry.
Combine harvester
Combine harvester: farm machine that cuts, threshes, separates, and cleans grain in one pass. Key milestones: Moore and Hascall 1834, McKay Sunshine 1884, Massey-Harris No 20 self-propelled 1938, axial-flow rotors 1975, modern AI automation.
Grain entrapment
Grain entrapment, or grain engulfment, is suffocation hazard in bins and silos when flowing, bridged, or collapsing grain buries a worker; kills nearly two dozen people yearly in the U.S., regulated by OSHA 29 CFR 1910.272.
Mechanical harvesting
Mechanical harvesting: collecting crops by machine using cutting, shaking, or picking mechanisms instead of hand labor. Covers grain combines, cotton pickers, tree shakers, economics, fruit damage trade-offs, and the shift toward robotic harvesting.
Reaper
Reaper, or mechanical reaper, a farm machine that cuts grain with a reciprocating cutter bar, replacing the sickle. Pioneered by Patrick Bell (1827-28), Obed Hussey (1833 patent), and Cyrus McCormick (1834); predecessor of the reaper-binder and combine harvester.
Scythe
Scythe: two-handed mowing tool with a long, slightly curved blade on a snath, invented about 500 BC; cuts grain three to four times faster than a sickle but needs more skill; Grim Reaper's tool.
Threshing
Threshing is the post-harvest operation that separates edible grain from the ears, stalks, and husks of harvested crops, done by flail, animals, or threshing machines such as Andrew Meikle's 1786 design.
Threshing machine
A threshing machine is a farm machine that separates grain from the stalks and ears of harvested cereal crops; the first successful design was built by Andrew Meikle in 1786.
Winnowing
Winnowing: separating grain from chaff using wind or forced air after threshing. Also called air separation; traditional tossing on threshing floors and modern fan-and-sieve winnowers in combines; measured airspeeds 800–1300 ft/min for paddy.