Scotland has produced many inventive minds who have given us technological advances in many different fields throughout the centuries.
Agriculture was no different, with advances arriving over the centuries.
Courier Country produced the man who invented the reaping machine, one Patrick Bell a farmer’s son from Mid Leoch, Auchterhouse, later to become the Rev Patrick Bell, minister of Carmyllie.
However, it was the Lothians who gave us the man who invented that other great component of modern combined harvesting, the threshing machine. His name was Andrew Meikle.
The threshing machine was pivotal in the advances in agriculture that followed.
Today we are still reaping the benefits from his marvellous work.
Meikle’s inventive genius was obviously inherited from his father James, who had promoted the fanner or winnower in the early 1700s after being sent to Holland by Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun in East Lothian to learn about pearl barley mills in 1710.
Incidentally, there are still Fletchers at Saltoun today.
However, during his time there he witnessed and subsequently introduced a set to Scotland. The four hand-rotated vanes created a draught which blew air through the grain falling through sieves to size it, and the air took out the chaff and trash to give a better sample.
Initially he was accused of producing the “de’il’s wind”, but by the late 1730s the technology was accepted.
His barley mill was also successfully installed at Saltoun following his return from Holland.
Andrew, born in 1719, obviously inherited his father’s fascination with grain processing and began experimenting with threshing devices while working as a millwright at Houston Mill at East Linton in East Lothian.
Other Scots had previously attempted to find better ways to thresh than the hand flail.
First to get credited for attempting a water-powered thresher was Michael Menzies of East Lothian, who produced a powered flailing machine in 1732 which promptly disintegrated when started up.
Next, in 1758, came a Mr Stirling of Dunblane, whose machine imitated a flax scutching mill and was only capable of threshing oats.
An improved version was offered by another Scottish farmer called Leckie. These machines were based on a vertical cylinder fed from the top with both the threshed grain and chaff falling to the bottom. Whilst not particularly successful it proved that a revolving cylinder was a better method of threshing than powered flails.
By the 1780s Meikle was encouraged by Sir Frances Kinloch of Gilmerton who, on his travels to Northumberland, had witnessed machines designed by Messrs Smart at Ilderton.
In 1786 Meikle’s first machine influenced by the Ilderton design was produced. He believed the key was to revolve the threshing cylinder at high speed. This enabled the four beaters on the cylinder to rub the grain out from the heads and fall from the cylinder; initially he had used a fluted roller system.
At this time only the heads of the grain were fed into the cylinder, but later the whole crop went through.
Eventually Meikle’s machines began to use a peg arrangement in both the cylinder and concave as opposed to beaters. This peg system later became the preferred method for American mills.
A jogging screen to shake out the threshed product for separation was another feature adopted.
Meikle’s machines could be driven by horse, water or wind power, and Meikle is credited with advances in windmill design also.
Eventually a large spiked wheel was used to tease out threshed straw while the later addition of a winnower provided a blast of air to blow out the chaff. These improvements made Meikle’s machine even better.
A year later Andrew Meikle and his son George erected a mill for £80 at Kilbagie near Clackmannan for Mr Stein, who operated one of the largest distillery complexes ever seen.
The understanding was that Stein paid for the materials, and if the machine failed to operate to Stein’s satisfaction no payment would be made to Meikle.
The operation on the north bank of the river Forth close to the site of today’s new Clackmannan bridge used huge tonnages of grain to produce huge quantities of liquor, so it would have to be a good machine.
Many thousands of cattle and pigs were fattened on the by-products.
George himself become a respected engineer who, with his father, had filed a patent for a double blast cleaning machine back in 1768.
He later erected a huge water wheel to help drain Blair Drummond Moss near Stirling for Lord Kames, whose wife had inherited the land.
Meikle’s machines or those based on his design began to be installed throughout the country, and in England this design was adapted favourably and called the Scotch Thresher.
Meikle filed a patent in 1788 but his designs were copied by others because he had failed to enforce his patents, although by this time he was in his 60s and may have been unable to protect himself.
A Mr Gladstone of Dumfries had erected 200 mills of Meikle’s design by 1810, no doubt making a fair bit of money in the process.
Despite his genius, Meikle made little money and in his later years Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster in Caithness president of the Board of Agriculture raised a public subscription to make his later life more comfortable.
Andrew Meikle died on November 27 1811 at the grand old age of 92. He is buried in the Preston Kirkyard in East Lothian, lying close to George Rennie of Phantassie.
Rennie’s son John, who became a famous civil engineer, was inspired by watching Meikle at work at Houston Mill as a youngster.
In the 1820s another John Rennie, presumably a nephew of the engineer, was making a name for himself and Phantassie as a key developer of the Shorthorn breed and also had a hand in creating Scotland’s National Fatstock Show.
Meikle’s design led to the widespread use of threshing machines, which were accommodated in the scientifically designed farm steadings built by the agriculture improvers, while many of his features can be seen today in the modern combines that cut the fields surrounding his East Lothian resting place.