cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/32524920
I watched several videos on a Combine Harvester's inner workings and I still don't understand how this thing works.
Well, the first step was making a machine that does every step of the process to make it easier. Then you combine those machines into one big machine, hence "combine".
No one starts from zero and builds a machine like this. Each of those processes was its own problem that got solved first.
People don't seem to understand that complicated things don't just get invented out of nowhere. They almost always are the result of many steps along the way, each of which was useful in its own right.
And that's why it's common that multiple people invent the same thing at the same time. Like the theory of evolution, or the telephone. These things may be complicated, but all of the building blocks were created over a long time, and suddenly, their invention or discovery becomes inevitable.
Not to say that it never happens that people make large leaps, but it's rare.
To many "smart" people have stood up and taken the credit for hundreds of others and generations of work.
We have been sold and buy the idea that there a supermen out there that are beyond clever and capable when they are just the result of their environment and resources from others. And now history is looked at through that lenses looking for singulars where there is plural.
To many “smart” people have stood up and taken the credit for hundreds of others and generations of work.
Like CEOs taking credit for all the work their engineers did.
coughMechaHitlercough
Same with evolution. "The eyeball is too complex to evolve as a whole unit!" Well, that's absolutely correct. First, start with a patch of light sensitive cells, iterate.
all of the building blocks were created over a long time, and suddenly, their invention or discovery becomes inevitable.
The first season of Connections did an exceptional job of illustrating that idea. Highly recommended!
Even all those different little inventions had plenty of steps along the way, and almost all of them were viable during its time.
The greatest strength humanity has had to create ingenious machines wasn't intelligence.
It was time and manpower.
No you’re wrong the eyeball is so complicated the only explanation is a divine being created us!!!
(Im being very sarcastic)
Well fuck that divine being, because squid eyes are better. I've had it up to here with the human god, I'm going to go start worshiping c'thulhu.
Much like a sewing machine. Fortunes were made by many, many people as they solved each small problem.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/how-singer-won-sewing-machine-war-180955919/
Ok let's start with one. How does one even start to make a self-propelling machine that cuts wheat stalks at ground level?
Make a self propelled machine and a machine that cuts grass and smoosh them together.
I generally prefer the squish method, but absolutely recognize the smoosh method and its inherent effectiveness.
You end up with more problems than you solve with squish and smoosh. These are sophisticated machines that can all too easily interfere with each others operation. The snuggle method has been proven to improve operability, lower service calls and reduce complaints
Cuddle works best because the machine spirits are happy.
i do be lovin the smooshes
We did two things first:
First we made a (simple) machine that cuts wheat stalks at ground level (scythe).
Second we made a (complex) machine that is self-propelling.
I'm gonna guess there was an intermediate step where we put mechanical scythes on horses or something
Of course, yes, there was. But it was extremely brief in the grand scheme of things.
https://www.farm-equipment.com/articles/4269-timeline-of-ag-equipment-firsts
1830's the first mechanical (horse drawn) harvester comes out, and by the 1860's steam powered tractors were being introduced.
Yep, e.g. the McCormick Reaper, which is unsurprisingly is mechanically very similar to the modern grain head on a combine.
Well first there's the cutting technology. Scything is ancient. Industrial production of push mowers using cylinder blades were developed in the 1800s and the more modern gas powered rotary cutters came along in the 19th century with many other self-propelled and automated mechanisms. This started with coal and wood fired agricultural equipment used for processing, like threshing and winnowing. As internal combustion engines (gas powered) developed in the 20th century more equipment and processes could be incorporated on-site and in-field.
The first version is just a machine that mimics the human motion of doing that task. Its a mechanical reaper that is pulled by a horse:
https://okfronline.com/2024/02/inventions-of-agriculture-the-reaper/
Then someone figures out how to make a self contained engine and it becomes self propelled.
This is a process that occurred over centuries.
How does one even start to make a self-propelling machine that cuts wheat stalks at ground level?
You look at a horse-drawn mowing machine like this and start thinking about how you could do something similar without the horse.
You take a self-propelling machine and put a hydraulic arm on its side that can be adjusted to be very close to the ground.
Mount a chainsaw at the end horizontally. Then experiment with blade lengths and different methods to keep it level over uneven ground.
When I was taught that Philo Farnsworth, a "farmer" who "invented" television by using the idea of plowing a field in parallel lines to display an image, I was completely dumbfounded. A farmer figured out how to build a vacuum tube, fire an electron beam, deflect it at phosphor-coated surface, and do so in lines, varying the intensity, to display an image? This simplistic "history" skips about 50 years of progress in vacuum tube design and absolutely fascinating mechanical television.
On that note, The Upright Thinkers by Leonard Mlodinow is a good book about scientific progress, and really drives a point about incremental nature progress.
They continuously improved on every single step in the process. What you see now are the descendants of many generations of harvesters.
This reminded me of a mini documentary on helping subsistence farmers in India. Since the farms were small and irregular, they couldn't recommend powered harvesters to be shared. They basically squatted down and used sickles. It was a whole family affair as kids as small as 3 were needed to harvest quickly and get it to market.
They introduced scythes with baskets to catch and softly drop the grain or whatever to the side.
this isn't that documentary, but it does show the slow going of using a sickle at first. It then shows how much faster the scythe is.
The documentary also showed how some were reluctant as the kids were free and basically the sickle was how it had always been done. So they had contests of 5 farmers against one guy on the scythe and a kid picking up the wheat and putting it on a cart. I think it was 30 meters long. The scythe had the job finished and helping the kid finish putting the grain in the cart before the other farmers had gotten halfway.
Scythes require more specific wind and moisture conditions compared to sickles (as do combines), but they do save a ton of work. My favorite scythe fact is that there is an even faster but more dangerous version called the Flemish Scythe, that is one-handed. From "The Scythe Book":
...John Gerard, in his seven- teenth-century Herball, recorded an accident wherein the mower:
made a wound to the bones, and withall very large and wide, and also with great effusion of blood; the poore man crept upon this herbe (Clownes Wound wort or All-heale), which he bruised with his hands, and tied a great quantity of it unto the wound with a piece of his shirt, which presently stanched the bleeding, and ceased the paine, insomuch that the poore man presently went to his dayes work againe, and so did from day to day, without resting one day until he was perfectly whole, which was accomplished in a few dayes.
Fucking hardcore.
Just wait until they learn about EUV photolithography
This, and the fusion thing that turns mercury into gold, are borderline witchcraft.
EUV is etching runes onto stones and trapping lightning and demons inside
Can I bind spells to my body by putting my hand in the machine?
Is this how we make biblically accurate Cortana?
If by spell mean skin cancer, probably yes.
No, the demons hurt you.
Don't think they built the proposed alchemic tokomak yet, thought it was a theoretical paper?
Etching runes onto stone by blasting little bits of metal into miniature suns.
They are awesome, and they cost an awesome amount of money.
It is strange that many, many farmers are simultaneously millionaires and dirt poor. Not that it's a problem exclusive to farmers by any means, but ya know. Slim operating margins.
I grew up on a farm and it's amazing that I always knew we were poor, but we always had our basic needs met. It probably contribited to me having an easy on-ramp to socialism once I moved to a city and saw the horrors of real poverty.
Relevant to the topic, we had a combine and I got to operate it to help my dad with harvesting. Crazy, very cool vehicle. It was always like magic to me.
Combines ain't that complex. But they are fussy to run. Growing up on a farm you learn to fix them at a pretty young age. I've even owned one myself, a well used Case I bought from an Uncle. I can close my eyes and "see' every stinking moving part on any of the combines we owned. And I can still remember how access the parts and fix them.
Personally, I hate balers far more.
Don't worry, John Deere will find a way to fuck it up.
Farmers are always looking to make their job easier and they have a few months during the winter to build stuff.
The only downside is the required listening.
Arr, yer a fine lookin woman, and I can’t wait to get me hands on yer land
I'm afraid what this click has just done to my YT algorithm 😅
Or the live version with the self-playing sousaphone:
I’ve gone down this rabbit hole, combine harvesters might be the most advanced piece of technology ever created, they’re fucking insane. Space travel seems simpler than the engineering that goes into those mother fuckers, a computer is child play in comparison.
They're very cool and intricate indeed. But, as someone who grew up on a farm and is pretty familiar with combines: you're drastically underestimating the engineering challenges in computers and space travel.
A computer is many orders of magnitude more intricate, technologically advanced, etc. A modern computer chip requires incredibly complex 3D labyrinths of different materials that have walls that are nanometers thick.
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