Inventions
Threshing Machine
Mechanical Engineering
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A threshing machine is a piece of farm equipment that separates grain seed from the stalks and husks of a harvested crop by beating the plant material to make the seed fall free. The Scottish engineer Andrew Meikle built the machine around 1786. Before its invention, threshing was done by hand with flails and consumed roughly a quarter of agricultural labor through the 18th century; mechanized threshing removed much of that drudgery, though the machine's spread through the 19th century also displaced farm laborers and was a contributing cause of the 1830 Swing Riots in England.
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