62 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Northboroiigh, Mass., worked out this problem, and obtained 

 cream in about one hour with a small, crude hand-machine, 

 consisting of two glass jars attached to a spindle, and making 

 only two hundred revolutions per minute. After months of 

 hard study in perfecting his little machine, he found, to his 

 surprise, in applying for a patent, the Germans already in 

 the field. 



I first began to use the centrifugal in May, 1879, and 

 to-day shall give you results of many of my experiments with 

 this first machine described as follows : It is a cylindrical 

 basket on an upright spindle, and in it are two floats, or dams, 

 extending from top to bottom. This basket is about two 

 feet in diameter, with a twelve-inch opening, and a top 

 flange extending some two inches upwards and outwards. 



This is substantially all as I first received the machine, 

 and it could be used for separating various fluids or solids 

 of different specific gravities. My first experiment was at 

 twelve hundred revolutions a minute, running about twenty 

 minutes, then stopping the machine slowly, and, when at 

 rest, skimming off by hand the cream which lay on the sur- 

 face in large, thick patches, and of the consistency of clotted 

 cream. At a subsequent trial I used a bent tube, and 

 scooped off the cream while the machine was in motion. 

 Then I adopted a simple arrangement by which I caught 

 the cream, thrown over the flange already described, in a 

 stationary pan, on top of the curb, which surrounded the 

 basket, and let off the skim-milk by valves, designed by 

 Rev. Mr. Bond, in the perpendicular wall, which are perfectly 

 controlled, even when at full speed. This enabled me to 

 use it as a continuous machine. Having increased the speed 

 to fifteen hundred revolutions per minute, I run about eighty 

 gallons per hour. 



On the 4th of June, 1879, mixing thoroughly all my 

 morning's milk, seven hundred and four pounds were run 

 into the centrifugal, and yielded thirty-five pounds eight 

 ounces, or a pound of butter to 19.83 pounds of milk. 

 This was churned in an old-fashioned barrel-churn after 

 twenty-four hours, at a temperature of 50°, and the butter 

 came in exactly seventeen minutes. Six hundred and sixty 

 pounds of the same milk, set twenty-four hours in deep pails 

 immersed in water at 45°, and skimmed very carefully by 

 hand, yielded thirty-two pounds four ounces, or a pound of 



