IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART OF MANUFACTURING CEREALINE.D FROM INDIAN CORN
Year: 1884

page_text: I JOSEPH FRANKLIN GENT, of Columbus in the County of Bartholomew and
State of Indiana, one of the United States of America, Gentleman, do hereby
declare the nature of my invention for "IMPROVEMENT IN THE ART OF
MANUFACTURING CEREALINE.' A PRODUCT OBTAINED FROM INDIAN CORN and
in what manner the same is to be performed, to be particularly described and
ascertained in and by the following statement:—
My invention relates to the art of manufacturing the product from maize or
indian corn,
described in my U.S. letters patent N° 223,847, and now known in
the market as cerealine and. by other names. The process of making it described
in my said letters patent involves the loss or waste of a large percentage of the
starchy portion of the corn in the clipping operation, even when the greatest care
is exercised.
The object of my invention is to avoid this loss or waste, and thus manufacture
cercaline so economically that it can be sold at prices making it available for
distilling purposes as well as for brewing purposes and as an edible. To this end
I proceed as follows;-
The corn is first thoroughly cleaned in the dry state. It is then steamed just
enough to soften and toughen the germs and husks, so that they may not grind up
in the reduction which follows, while the glutinous or starchy interior remains
practically unaffected by the steam.
The corn thus steamed is immediately coarsely ground or broken, preferably
between corrugated rolls, reducing it to a coarse meal composed of separate hulls,
germs, and granules of the starchy portion mixed with some finely reduced starchy
meal.
This material is at once screened to separate therefrom the hulls as well as the
fine meal.
The remaining material composed of coarse starchy granules and germs is then
separated into grades by means of suitable screens or sieves, and then while the
germs are still soft, submitted, each grade separately, to the action of a mechanical
picker or germ extinctor for picking or extracting the soft germs from the harder
coarse starchy granules. This cleansed granular material is then again steamed to
soften it, and is finally while still soft, pressed and dried, preferably by passing it
through hot rolls, so that the granules will be flattened into thin hard flakes which

page_text: constitute the cerealine. For extracting the germs from the granular material such
a machine as I will now describe may be used.
In the annexed drawings
Fig. 1. is an end elevation of the machine.
Fig. 2. is a plan view of the same, and
Fig. 3. is a vertical section of the machine in the plane of the axis of the picker
cylinder.
The same letters of reference indicate identical parts in all the figures.
In the machine which I have used with signal practical success the picker
cylinder A is composed of a solid wooden cylinder covered with leather thick set
with straight fine steel wire teeth, as fine as the teeth of a carding engine, projecting
about 1 to 16 of an inch and about 1/16 of an inch apart. The cylinder is
provided with a suitable shaft journaled in vertically adjustable boxes, seated on
springs and adjusted by screws as shown. This picker cylinder is arranged just
about and across the table top b, of a suitable frame or stand B.
An endless apron or belt C, of cotton or other suitable material is stretched on
cross rollers c c¹, so that its upper side or ply will move over the table b, and under
the picker cylinder.
The roller c, is mounted in adjustable bearings, as shown, in order that the belt
may be properly stretched. The picker cylinder and belt B¹, are driven to move at
the same speed, in the directions indicated by the arrows on fig. 1, from a counter
shaft D, through the intervention of chain gearing. The ground material is fed to
the belt C from a hopper E, the discharge orifice of which is about as long as the
belt is wide, so that the ground material will be spread in a film or sheet on the
moving feed belt.
The picker cylinder should be so adjusted that its teeth will nearly touch the
feed belt, so as to enter the sheet of ground material fed along under the cylinder,
the teeth press the hard, flinty, or starchy particles into the soft belt, and penetrate
and carry away the soft germs.
After it has been picked by the rotating picker cylinder the cleansed ground
material is discharged into a receiving hopper F, from which it may be spouted
away to the steam bath.
The germs extracted from the ground material are removed from the picker
cylinder by a fixed brush or comb G, and fall thence into a conveyor H to be
spouted away.
Fig. 4. illustrates a modified form of the machine, a rotating cloth-covered feed
roller I, having been substituted for the endless feed belt.
Having now particularly described and ascertained the nature of my said
invention, and in what manner the same is to be performed I declare that what
I claim is:
The improvement of the art of making cerealine, which consists of the following
steps, substantially as before set forth, viz: first, steaming the corn just enough to
soften and toughen the hulls and germs; secondly, coarsely grinding or breaking
the steamed corn and separating the hulls and fine meal from the ground or
broken material; third, picking the germs from the coarse starchy particles;
fourth, steaming the thus cleansed starchy particles; and fifth, pressing and drying
the steamed starchy particles to reduce them to thin flakes.
T
of August 1sei