AN APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING FRUIT FROM TREES WITHOUT INJURY
Year: 1863

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by Thomas Charles Bull and Thomas
Morgan at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents, with their
Petition, on the 25th July 1868.
We, THOMAS CHARLES BULL and THOMAS MORGAN, both of Weobley, in the
County of Hereford, do hereby declare the nature of the said Invention for
"AN APPARATUS FOR COLLECTING FRUIT FROM TREES WITHOUT INJURY," to be
as follows, that is to say :-
The object of our Invention is to collect the fruit from trees in such a
manner as it shall not suffer injury. At present, to the best of our knowledge
and belief, there is no machine or apparatus for effecting this, and, as is well
known, the system of hand picking tends to deprive many delicate fruits of
their bloom, while if the fruits are allowed to fall on the ground they must
necessarily suffer much injury. To remedy these defects, we propose to
construct such an apparatus as will catch the ripe fruits almost immediately
upon their falling from their stems, and gather together the whole fruit from
the tree to which the apparatus is applied. For this purpose we place round
the tree from which the fruit is to be gathered, at proper distances and at
equidistant positions, certain posts or standards, which may be made of wood

page_text: or iron, or any other material, and which may be of any number. We then
take a circular piece of cloth, which must be rather larger than the area
enclosed by the posts or standards before mentioned, and having made a slit
from any part of the circumference to a point rather beyond its centre, intro-
duce into the centre of the cloth a band, inside which is placed a reeving
string or other contrivance by which to attach the middle of the cloth
round the trunk of the tree, and which is placed as high on the trunk as
the branches will allow. Round the circumference of the cloth we make
a bem, in which is introduced another reeving string, which when operated
on will give the necessary bellied form for allowing any article placed
thereon to have an inclination inwards; we then make two apertures in
the cloth (which apertures are afterwards fitted with gussets of a proper
form and construction), one in each half of the cloth, in such positions
between the circumference and the centre of the cloth that the centre and the
circumference of the cloth being simultaneously raised, anything falling thereon
will have a tendency towards either one or other of these apertures.
We have before mentioned that the standards or posts which we imagine
to be placed round the tree from which fruit is to be collected may be of any
number, but for an ordinary sized tree we prefer to use eight, and having
secured the middle of the cloth to the trunk of the tree in manner already
described, we attach those parts of the circumference of the cloth which meet
the posts to the said posts by means of any suitable fastenings to three of the
posts, and the corresponding opposite three, the cloth should be attached at an
equal height, but to the remaining two at a slightly greater height, so that the
cloth may be bellied in two equal divisions, and in such a manner that any fruit
falling from the tree on to the cloth must have a tendency towards either one
or other of the apertures already named, underneath which may either be
placed a basket or proper receiver, or the apparatus which we propose to use
for separating the leaves and other matter from the fruit, and which we now
proceed to describe.
The second part of our Invention consists of a contrivance for separating
the leaves, dirt, or any foreign matter from the fruit. For this purpose we
construct a series of two or more troughs, which shall be so arranged as to be
all on the same incline, but placed at different elevatious, and with a break
or space between each, in such a manner that while any fruit placed on
the first will acquire sufficient impetus from traversing it to reach the next,
the leaves, dirt, and other matter may fall into the open space between the
troughs.

page_text: If it be found that this process does not thoroughly cleanse the fruit from
all foreign substances, we propose so to construct the troughs as to place at
the upper end of the bed of each trough a brush, so that the leaves, dirt, or any
other matter may be at once stayed, and the fruit after traversing the last
trough arrive at the receiver provided perfectly clean.