THE IKRIGATION AGE. 



249 



FARM MACHINERY INVESTIGATIONS. 



Address by Prof. C. J. Zintheo Before the N. A. I. and V. M. 



WHAT MODERN MACHINERY SAVES. 



(CONCLUDED.) 



To be sure, all responsible implement manufactur- 

 ers have their own experimental departments, in which 

 more or less care is exercised in the development of ma- 

 chines and the improvement of the parts. It often 

 happens thai the men who are doing this work have a 

 great many other duties to perform and consequently 

 the experimental work is not as thorough as it might he. 

 But even with the best of care exercised by such de- 

 partments, the judgment passed upon the machines is 

 only from the manufacturer's and not from the farmer's 

 standpoint. If the perfected machines were sent to some 

 implement experiment station, and there subjected to 

 thorough scientific and impartial tests from the buyer's 

 standpoint, and compared with similar machines of 

 other makes, these tests would probably save the manu- 

 facturers thousands of dollars. Cases are perhaps famil- 

 iar to most of you, where incorrectly designed machines 

 put on the market in large numbers have almost ruined 

 the manufacturers. 



It is hoped that the courses of farm mechanics in 

 the colleges will develop into departments of agricul- 

 tural engineering, from which implement manufacturers 

 may obtain graduates trained in agriculture and me- 

 chanical work, who will make valuable employes in their 

 experimental departments. The men now employed in 

 designing and implement experimentation were often 

 trained for something else, as at present there are no 

 schools of training in this country for agricultural engi- 

 neers. For this reason these men are often lacking in 

 either the necessary agricultural or mechanical training, 

 and as the implement manufacturers have to rely to 

 a large extent upon their experimental departments, it 

 is exceedingly important that these men should not lack 

 either of these lines of training. 



It may be advisable to refer to some of the lines of 

 farm machinery investigation which the Office of Ex- 

 periment Stations of the Department of Agriculture is 

 planning to conduct in the near future. 



The grain harvesting machinery practically reached 

 its present state of perfection about fifteen years ago, 

 and a bulletin on the development of the reaper has 

 been issued by the Office of Experiment Stations. 



Owing to the more difficult problems to be solved 

 in harvesting corn by machinery, implements for this 

 purpose have only come into use during the last fifteen 

 years. There are now numerous corn binders, shockers, 

 pickeis, huskers and shredders on the market, which 

 have materially aided the farmers. A valuable field of 

 investigation will be to trace the development of these 

 machines and to learn just what saving the investment 

 in the various corn harvesting machines will be to the 

 farmer, or what interest he will make on his invest- 

 ment; the amount of work which can be done per day, 

 as well as the efficiency, durability and draft of the ma- 

 chines. 



The corn planter is still in a- stage of development 

 and broad claims are made for both the edge drop and 

 round hole plate methods of dropping the corn kernels. 

 From experiments already conducted, it has been learned 

 that this is a fruitful field for investigation by the Ex- 



periment Stations. Letters have been received from 

 corn planter manufacturers, stating that they have im- 

 proved the accuracy of the drop over twenty per cent, by 

 following the suggestions offered by the experimenters 

 on their planter. It was found that the edge drop 

 planter would do more accurate work by grading the 

 corn kernels into uniform sizes. This is a tedious work 

 to do by hand and the attention of manufacturers of 

 fanning mills was called to the need of a corn grading 

 machine. Several firms made attempts to construct such 

 a machine, with the result that three machines were 

 produced, working on entirely different principles, one 

 of which will grade corn more accurately into uniform 

 sizes than can possibly be done by hand. To realize the 

 importance of these experiments it is only necessary to 

 state that by the use of corn planters that will drop the 

 corn uniformly, a predetermined number of kernels per 

 hill, the yield of corn per acre can easily be increased 

 twenty per cent. This increase in yield would in a 

 single year more than pay for all the corn planters 

 made. 



The manure spreader has in recent years been 

 added to the list of implements sold by the majority of 

 implement dealers. In some localities their introduc- 

 tion is not making much headway, for the reason that 

 it is hard to convince farmers, and especially tenant 

 farmers, that the price paid for a manure spreader is 

 a profitable investment. Experiments conducted to de- 

 termine the time saved by the use of the manure 

 spreader, the advantages of its use over the hand method 

 and the interest which the farmer may expect to make 

 on his investment, will certainly be both timely and 

 valuable. 



The subject of grain drills has never been ade- 

 quately investigated. Drills are now made in a great 

 many ways, such as single disc, double disc, shoe and 

 hoe drills; and the rows are planted six, seven, eight 

 and ten inches apart. Which of these kinds of drills 

 can be used to the best advantage in the various sections 

 of the country is still an open question, as no experi- 

 ments have been conducted to accurately determine 

 which will produce the best yield and the lightest draft. 

 We hope to conduct experiments which will answer these 

 questions. 



In threshing small grain with our modern threshing 

 machine, it is claimed by those who have studied the 

 subject that the loss through improper separation, due 

 to ignorance in the handling of the machines or to' im- 

 proper designs, amounts to nearly one bushel per acre, 

 on the average. This loss would amount to over 8,000,- 

 000 bushels for a single state in which wheat is the prin- 

 ciple crop raised. We hope to determine just what the 

 loss from this source is, and through suggestive changes 

 in the separators, reduce it to a minimum. 



The disc plow has been introduced in the last few 

 years and is claimed by some manufacturers to be suit- 

 able in any soil ; by others, to be adapted to only certain 

 localities; and by still others, to be in no case equal to 

 the moldboard plow. A fruitful field will be the in- 

 vestigation of the merits of the disc plow compared with 

 the moldboard plow, in co-operation with experiment 

 stations and farmers, to compare the draft, efficiency of 

 work, and yield per acre when using disc and mold- 

 board plows in various sections of the country, and thus 

 try to answer the questions often asked by farmers as 

 to when and where to use the disc plow or the mold- 

 board plow. 



