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The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from its combining three separate operations comprising harvesting—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers, and canola. The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock. Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labor saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population that must be engaged in agriculture. ==History== Scottish inventor Patrick Bell invented the reaper in 1826. The combine was invented in the United States by Hiram Moore in 1834, and early versions were pulled by horse or mule teams, ox.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=Mascus UK )〕 In 1835, Moore built a full-scale version and by 1839, over 50 acres of crops were harvested. By 1860, combine harvesters with a cutting width of several meters were used on American farms.〔(【引用サイトリンク】publisher=Cornways )〕 In 1882, the Australian Hugh Victor McKay had a similar idea and developed the first commercial combine harvester in 1885, the Sunshine Harvester.〔(Timesonline.co.uk ), access date 31-09-2009〕 Combines, some of them quite large, were drawn by mule or horse teams and used a bullwheel to provide power. Later, steam power was used, and George Stockton Berry integrated the combine with a steam engine using straw to heat the boiler.〔(Historylink.com ), access date 18-08-2009〕Tractor-drawn combines (also called pull-type combines) became common after World War II as many farms began to use tractors. An example was the All-Crop Harvester series. These combines used a shaker to separate the grain from the chaff and straw-walkers (grates with small teeth on an eccentric shaft) to eject the straw while retaining the grain. Early tractor-drawn combines were usually powered by a separate gasoline engine, while later models were PTO-powered. These machines either put the harvested crop into bags that were then loaded onto a wagon or truck, or had a small bin that stored the grain until it was transferred to a truck or wagon with an auger. In the U.S., Allis-Chalmers, Massey-Harris, International Harvester, Gleaner Manufacturing Company, John Deere, and Minneapolis Moline are past or present major combine producers. In 1911, the Holt Manufacturing Company of California produced a self-propelled harvester.〔(The John Deere Tractor Legacy ), Don McMillan, Voyageur Press, 2003, page 118 with photo〕 In Australia in 1923, the patented Sunshine Auto Header was one of the first center-feeding self-propelled harvesters.〔(Remarkable Australian Farm Machines ), Graeme R. Quick, Rosenberg Publishing, 2007, page 72.〕 In 1923 in Kansas, the Baldwin brothers and their Gleaner Manufacturing Company patented a self-propelled harvester which included several other modern improvements in grain handling.〔(Gleaner: 85 Years of Harvest History ), Gleaner Agco Company, 2008, page 8〕 Both the Gleaner and the Sunshine used Fordson engines; early Gleaners used the entire Fordson chassis and driveline as a platform. In 1929 Alfredo Rotania of Argentina patented a self-propelled harvester.〔(La maquinaria que haría historia ), La Nacion, 6 Nov 2004 (Spanish)〕 In 1937, the Australian-born Thomas Carroll, working for Massey-Harris in Canada, perfected a self-propelled model and in 1940 a lighter-weight model began to be marketed widely by the company.〔("Carroll, Thomas (Tom) (1888 - 1968)" ), ''Australian Dictionary of Biography''〕 Lyle Yost invented an auger that would lift grain out of a combine in 1947, making unloading grain much easier. In 1952 Claeys launched the first self-propelled combine harvester in Europe;〔CARROL J.: The World Encyclopedia of Tractors & Farm Machinery, 1999 Annes Piblisching Ltd, p. 127〕 in 1953, the European manufacturer CLAAS developed a self-propelled combine harvester named 'Herkules', it could harvest up to 5 tons of wheat a day.〔(Timesonline.co.uk ), access date 31-09-2009〕 This newer kind of combine is still in use and is powered by diesel or gasoline engines. Until the self-cleaning rotary screen was invented in the mid-1960s combine engines suffered from overheating as the chaff spewed out when harvesting small grains would clog radiators, blocking the airflow needed for cooling. A significant advance in the design of combines was the rotary design. The grain is initially stripped from the stalk by passing along a helical rotor instead of passing between rasp bars on the outside of a cylinder and a concave. Rotary combines were first introduced by Sperry-New Holland in 1975.〔(Farmindustrynews.com )〕 In about the 1980s on-board electronics were introduced to measure threshing efficiency. This new instrumentation allowed operators to get better grain yields by optimizing ground speed and other operating parameters. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「combine harvester」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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