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As the young United States expanded, inventions became one of the cornerstones of progress. Inventors could come from any class of people, including many who worked long and hard in the dominant industry of 1862, agriculture
September 30, 2012 | 3
Artificial beehive design improved, and honey production expanded. The new hives helped bees to make honey and allowed the beekeeper to extract it without damaging the colony....[More]
By 1862 most people sweetened their food with refined cane sugar from Hawaii or Puerto Rico, and also molasses, domestic maple syrup or honey....[More]
An inventor in Fort Wayne, Indiana, designed an easy-to-build (perhaps also easy to knock over) fence for “the settler on the distant prairies or the emigrant breaking ground for the first time in the far West.” ...[More]
This gang plow was designed to turn up the rich prairie soil in Illinois to make it ready for planting. Plows were formerly pulled by horses while the farmer walked behind them, but the addition of the seat for the comfort of the farmer prompted the magazine to ask, “Is there not danger that they will be growing lazy?...[More]
Cutting grass with a scythe was laborious. After it was cut the farmer had to gather it so that it could dry into hay—the fuel of the farm in 1862—and be collected....[More]
“Among all the agricultural implements which have been invented in modern times we know of no other that pays for itself so quickly, in the labor that it saves, as the horse rake.” This newfangled rake from 1862 replaced up to six farmhands raking cut hay by hand....[More]
This overengineered machine from 1862 presages the complex agricultural machinery that now dominates agribusiness. The device combined the actions of cutting and gathering grain onto a platform, where it could be bundled by a farmhand....[More]
Folding blades are quite an old concept. The news on this gadget from 1862, including its T-shaped blade tips, was that it was an entire pocket tool kit for the science and art of budding—attaching new buds to old trees to yield particular varieties of fruit....[More]
Water, in 1862 as now, was the lifeblood of farming and rural life. Much thought was given to how to get it out of the ground in the cheapest and easiest way....[More]
The Old Croton Aqueduct started supplying New Yorkers with water in 1842. For most of the rest of the country in 1862, water was laboriously hauled up by pump or by bucket....[More]
Agricultural products destined for the market, such as cotton or hay, need to be squeezed into bales handy for sale and for transport by cart, rail or ship....[More]
Ripping out tree stumps is hard work. This invention from 150 years ago from Grand Rapids, Michigan, was one of many that applied simple principles of physics to solve such problems....[More]
The task of getting newly sheared sheep wool into and out of a large tub of water for three or four rinses was obviously too laborious for one inventor from East Dedham, Mass, who thought up this device in 1862 for cleaning wool better and faster....[More]
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3 Comments
Add Comment(Slide 12... The spelling of "principles" should probably be fixed.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI enjoyed "walking through the exhibition" otherwise.
unfortunately, the most recent agricultural methods involve use of diesel or gas powered equipment to grow and harvest crops that are been genetically modified to be able to withstand being sprayed with RoundUp weed killer their entire lives. It is funny that people were concerned about farmers becoming lazy when the "lazy plow" sit down horse powered plow was invented. If only they cold see how lazy modern farmers are, and how dependent on inorganic fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides, and immigrant farm labor they have become.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThey may need to rethink the way that stump extractor is rigged.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this