Meikle, Andrew

Andrew Meikle, (born 1719, Scotland—died Nov. 27, 1811, Houston Mill, near Dunbar, East Lothian), Scottish millwright and inventor of the threshing machine for removing the husks from grain.

During most of his life Meikle was a millwright at Houston Mill. In 1778 he constructed his first threshing machine, probably basing its design on a device patented in 1734 by Michael Menzies. The machine was a failure, as was a second, developed from a Northumberland model. Meikle analyzed these threshers and constructed a strong drum with fixed beaters that beat rather than rubbed the grain. The drum that made Meikle’s machine a success may have been copied from the flax-scutching machine used to beat the fibres from flax plants. He took out a patent in 1788 and probably began manufacture a year later; he does not seem to have realized a fortune from his invention, inasmuch as a subscription for his relief was started in 1809. Meikle also devised a method for rapidly furling the sails of windmills to prevent damage from storms.