(Edited from Wikipedia)

SUMMARY

A grain elevator is an agrarian facility complex designed to stock pile or store grain. In it also could mean a tower containing a bucket elevator or a pneumatic conveyor, which scoops up grain from a lower level and deposits it in a or other storage facility.

In most cases, the term "grain elevator" also covers the entire elevator complex, including receiving and testing offices, weighbridges, storage facilities etc. It may also mean organizations that operate or control several individual , in different locations.

Prior to the advent of the grain elevator, grain was usually handled in bags rather than in bulk (large quantities of loose grain). However, Dart's Elevator was a major innovation. It was invented by a merchant named Joseph Dart and an engineer named Robert Dunbar during 1842–43, in Buffalo, New York. Using the steam-powered mills of as their model, they invented the marine leg, which scooped loose grain out of the hulls of ships and elevated it to the top of a marine tower.

Early grain elevators and bins were often constructed of framed or cribbed wood, and were prone to fire. Grain elevator bins, tanks and are now usually constructed of steel or reinforced concrete. Bucket elevators are used to lift grain to a distributor or consignor, from where it falls through spouts and/or conveyors and into one of a number of bins, silos or tanks in a facility.

When desired, silos, bins and tanks are emptied by gravity flow, sweep augers and conveyors. As grain is emptied from bins, tanks and silos it is conveyed, blended and weighted into trucks, railroad cars or , and shipped to grain wholesalers, exporters and/or local end-users, such as flour mills, breweries and ethanol or alcohol distilleries.

HISTORY

Joseph Dart (1799–1879) was an American lawyer, businessman and an entrepreneur associated with the grain industry.

1 Dart was born at the Middle Haddam Historic District in the town of East Hampton, Connecticut in 1799. He came to Buffalo, New York, from Connecticut in 1821. There in the village of under 2,000 he went into the hat and fur business with Joseph Stocking. Dart learned to speak the Iroquois language to trade with the local Native Americans. Their store was at the corner of Main Street and Swan Street. It was strategically located and usually the first place a Native American would visit when they came to Buffalo. Chief Red Jacket visited frequently. Dart became known as a trusted businessman.

The opened soon after he arrived in Buffalo and developed grain trading from local dealings into a multi-state industry. Since this was more lucrative it appealed to Dart as a businessman. Dart financed the building of the first steam-powered grain elevator in the world in 1842 that was designed by thirty year old mechanical engineer Robert Dunbar. He built the grain elevator building, known as Dart's Elevator, in 1842 on the bank of the Buffalo river where it meets the Evans Ship Canal.

The invention had a profound effect on Buffalo and the movement of on the :

"The grain elevator developed as a mechanical solution to the problem of raising grain from the lake boats to bulk storage bins where it remained until being lowered for shipment on canal boats or railroad car. Less than fifteen years after Joseph Dart's invention of the grain elevator, Buffalo had become the world's largest grain port, surpassing Odessa, Russia; London, ; and Rotterdam, Holland."

Dart was a lumber dealer in the Buffalo area. He was a pioneer developer of the Buffalo Water Works, a founder of the Buffalo Seminary, and a member of the Buffalo Historical Society.

Dart’s Elevator

Dart's Elevator was the world's first steam-powered grain elevator. It was designed and built by Joseph Dart and Robert Dunbar in 1842 in Buffalo, New York. The elevator burned in the 1860s.

Designed and built in 1842 by Dart and Dunbar, the Dart Elevator in Buffalo, New York was 50 by 100 feet. It was the world's first steam-powered grain elevator. It had a leather vertical conveyor belt with buckets. This system could unload grain from the interiors of a lake boat hull, and do it far faster than the manual methods previously employed.

2 The boat just had to be moored next to the storage elevator. Dunbar designed most of the grain elevators that at the end of the nineteenth century were along the Buffalo River. The city of Buffalo received grain from the states of and Illinois in volume in the 1830s. That presented the problem of congestion on the docks. The existing method of managing the transfer of grain from boats overwhelmed the port. Dart invented a mechanical system of belts with buckets attached to scoop up the grain from the hulls of boats and put into storage.

Dart's gain elevator set into place industrial principles of grain storage management. By the end of the nineteenth century these elevator systems had promoted a new style in architecture. The application of these grain transfer systems affected how storage buildings were designed and built. These elevator conveyor systems permitted the transfer of grain to bins separated by a distance, where before they had to be close to each other.

The equipment that was designed with this new technology was more efficient and cost effective in management of grain. The layout of conveying equipment had an effect on the architecture of the elevator building. The classic high grain storage building became typical. Many of the elevator companies incorporated these new innovations of Dart. Dart with engineer Dunbar applied state-of-the-art technology to the administration of grain. They applied their grain elevator innovations to boats and rail transportation that updated the old school methods of moving grain by hand to fit the greater needs of modern times.

The elevator bucket mechanism operated up to 2,000 bushels an hour. That amount was equivalent to a crew of men working all day in ideal conditions. Dart's grain elevator building was finished in late 1842 at a site where the Buffalo river and the Evans Ship Canal meet. His elevator was a successful enterprise from the start.

Dart was often paid double his regular fee for emergency storage of grain from a farm. The first vessel unloaded at Dart's elevator was the schooner Philadelphia which had 4,515 bushels of wheat. The first cargo of corn unloaded was on 22 June 1843 from the schooner South America. Dart's elevator unloaded during the first year of operation over 200,000 bushels of grain.

3 CONSEQUENCES

It wasn't by accident that the world's second and third grain elevators were built in Toledo, and , New York, in 1847. Fledgling American cities, they were connected through an emerging international grain trade of unprecedented proportions.

Grain shipments from farms in Ohio were loaded onto ships by elevators at Toledo; these ships were unloaded by elevators at Buffalo that transshipped their grain to canal boats (and, later, rail cars), which were unloaded by elevators in Brooklyn, where the grain was either distributed to East Coast flour mills or loaded for further transshipment to England, the or .

But this eastern flow of grain was matched by an equally important flow of people and capital in the "opposite" direction, that is, from East to West. Because of the money to be made in grain production and, of course, because of the very existence of an all-water route to get there, increasing numbers of immigrants in Brooklyn came to Ohio, and Illinois to become farmers.

More farmers meant more turned into farmlands, which in turn meant increased grain production, which of course meant that more grain elevators would have to be built in places like Toledo, Buffalo and Brooklyn (and , and Duluth). It was precisely through this "feedback loop" of productivity — set in motion by the invention of the grain elevator — that America itself became an agricultural and economic colossus on the world stage: the planet's single largest producer of wheat, corn, oats and rice, a distinction it claims to this day.

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