Contraptions

In 1831, young Cyrus Hall Mc-Cormick of Virginia hitched four horses to "a cross between an Astley chariot, a wheelbarrow and a flying machine," and drove with noisy lurchings into neighbor's hilly oat field. Dogs barked, slaves giggled, small boys guyed as the clumsy juggernaut slewed and jolted through a ragged swath. The owner of the oats called a halt. It took the young inventor months to convert anyone but his family to the reaper.

Today, the International Harvester Co., which Cyrus Hall Mc-Cormick founded in Chicago, makes:

beet pullers

cane mills

coiled springs

corn bundlers

corn cultivators

corn pickers

corn shellers

manure spreaders

motor coaches

motor truck units

movers

plows

potato diggers

rakes

corn shredders

cream separators

culti-packers

engines

ensilage cutters

grain binders

grain headers

harrows

harvester-threshers

hay loaders

hay presses

hay stackers

listers

reapers

seeding machines

side rakes

speed trucks

sweep rakes

tedders

threshers

tillage instruments

tractors

twine

wagons

etc.

A fortnight ago the International Harvester Co. announced the addition to its list of three new contraptions. Inserted alphabeti- cally in the list, the new names would not be impressive. Looked at separately and thoughtfully, they appeared almost as epochal as the original McCormick reaper. They were:

1) A cotton picker

2) A cotton boller

3) A cotton cleaner

Picker, In lowland fields, cotton crops ripen unevenly, cannot be picked all at the same time. The mechanical picker had to be so de-signed that it would discriminate between ripe and unripe bolls. On the new machine, two arms reach out and gather in the spreading branches of the cotton bushes. Two vertical, revolving cylinders spined with close-set spindles, brush along the branches gently. The cylinders slide backwards horizontally on their bases at the same speed as the whole machine is moving forward. This saves the branches from being torn off the bushes. By the time the cylinders reach the end of the backward slide, their spindles have finished the task of combing all loose fibres off the branches and out of opened bolls. The branches are released. The fibres are brushed off the spindles by "doffers." Cylinders and spindles move forward again, ready for the next bush.

Boller. Where cotton ripens evenly, all the bolls, open or not, may be taken at once. The new stripping machine is simpler than the picker. Its mechanical fingers simply remove all bolls from the branches brought in by the machine's arms, and drop them in a box.

Cleaner. Dirt and trash are removed from the fibres by dropping the fluff on a rapidly revolving disc. Heavy particles are drawn out by the centrifugal force. A belt-and-cylinder device cleans further. The fluff is bagged at the rear of the machine.

Another type of cleaning device opens the closed bolls and passes all fibres to a drum with spindles which will pick up only fibres, no trash. The fluff is then pneumatically bagged or loaded, ready to be ginned (have the seeds re-moved).

Capacity. Why may these machines revolutionize the cotton industry? Because, according to the makers, two men can operate the picker or the stripper, can pick or strip two to five bales of cotton in a day, equivalent to what two men could do by hand in eight to 15 days.