Grain Elevator

A grain elevator is a facility built to store bulk grain, and the term also names the mechanical tower inside it that scoops grain from a lower level and lifts it into a silo or other storage structure. Before 1843, grain was generally handled and shipped in bags rather than in bulk; the merchant Joseph Dart Jr. adapted an existing grain-elevator concept from the American inventor Oliver Evans for commercial use, and the engineer Robert Dunbar carried out the actual design and construction of the resulting steam-powered elevator in Buffalo, New York, which began operating on 1 June 1843 as Dart's Elevator and moved grain roughly seven times faster than existing nonmechanized methods. This breakthrough let Buffalo keep pace with rapidly growing American grain production through the 1840s and 1850s, and in 1899 Frank H. Peavey and Charles F. Haglin built the first cylindrical concrete grain elevator, the design that remains the North American standard today.