Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progressBoyd, James P. (James Penny)
History
Triumphs and Wonders of the 19th Century: The True Mirror of a Phenomenal Era: A volume of original, entertaining and instructive historic and descriptive writings, showing the many and marvellous achievements which distinguish an hundred years of material, intellectual, social and moral progress
Boyd, James P. (James Penny)
Inventions; Progress
The development of dairying in the United States during the closing
decades of the nineteenth century has been uninterrupted, and
marked by events of the greatest consequence in the entire history.
The importance of two inventions during this period cannot be
overestimated. The first is the application of centrifugal force to the
separation of cream from milk. This is based upon the specific gravity
of the milk serum or skim milk, and of whatever impure matter may have
entered the milk, such gravity being greater than that of the fatty
portion or cream. The dairy centrifuge, or cream separator, enables the
creaming or “skimming” to be done immediately after milking, preferably
while the milk is still warm. The cream can be at once churned, while
sweet; but a better practice is to cure or “ripen” it for churning:
this can be done at a comparatively high temperature, dispensing with
the necessity of so much ice or cold water. The skim milk is available
for use while still warm, quite sweet, and in its best condition for
feeding to young animals. This mechanical method is more efficient,
securing more perfect cream separation than the old gravity system, and
the dairy labor is very largely reduced. The handling and caring for
the milk may be thus wholly removed from the duties of the household.
A usual plan is to have a “skimming station,” to which the milk is
hauled at least daily from the producing farms in the vicinity, and
where one or more separators are operated by power. Separators are
also made of sizes and patterns suited to farm use, where they may
be operated by hand or by light power,—electricity, steam, water, a
horse, a bull, a sheep, or a dog. Besides its economy and its effect
upon labor, this machine almost eliminates the factor of climate in a
large part of dairy management, and altogether has worked a revolution
in the industry. The centrifugal separator is still a marvel to those
who see it working for the first time: the whole milk, warm, flows
into the centre of a strong steel bowl, held in an iron frame; the
bowl revolves at a rate of 1500 to 25,000 times per minute, and from
two projecting tubes cream and skim milk flow in continuous streams to
separate receptacles. The machines can be regulated to produce cream
of any desired thickness or quality. These separators, of different
sizes, are capable of thus skimming or separating, or more properly,
creaming, from 15 to 500 gallons of milk per hour. A machine of
standard factory size has a speed of 6000 to 7000 revolutions a minute,
and a capacity for separating 250 gallons of milk an hour. The world is
indebted to Europe for this invention, at least as a dairy appliance.
Yet investigations were in progress contemporaneously in this country
along the same line, and many of the material improvements in the cream
separator and several entirely new patterns have since been invented
here. The first separators were put into practical use in this country
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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