IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF BISCUITS, AND IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS CONNECTED THEREWITH
Year: 1877

page_text: PROVISIONAL SPECIFICATION left by James Henry Gray and Alfred Harvey
at the Office of the Commissioners of Patents on the 19th June 1877.
JAMES HENRY GRAY, of the Firm of "Gray, Dunn, and Company," Bread and
Biscuit Manufacturers, of the City of Glasgow, North Britain, and ALFRED HARVEY,
Foreman to the said Firın. "IMPROVEMENTS IN THE MANUFACTURE OF BISCUITS,
AND IN MACHINERY OR APPARATUS CONNECTED THEREWITH."
This Invention refers essentially to a new or improved mode of cooling biscuits
immediately after their removal from the oven, especially the finer and more fragile
class of biscuits, and which improvement is found to harden or solidify them so that
there is a very much smaller proportion of waste by breakage than heretofore,
besides enabling the biscuits to be packed or placed in tins and despatched more
expeditiously than formerly.
And the nature and novelty of the Invention consist in delivering the biscuits either
automatically or by hand in a usual manner from the baking trays and ovens, or from
the travelling chain of continuous baking ovens into portable shallow trays with
wire-gauze bottoms, or it might be wickerwork trays, or other equivalent trays
with open or perforated bottoms.
And by the said improvements these trays are placed over the top of close-sided.
hopper-shaped air chambers ranged along the sides of the oven or drying room,
each set in and directly connected at the bottom to a common air duct or conduit
leading froin any ordinary air fanners or other air blowing apparatus, the throat
or entrance of each hopper at its junction with the air duct being fitted with an
air throttle slide or valve for regulating the current of air to be passed up through
the hopper and perforated trays and biscuits contained therein, the biscuits being,
when desired, turned over or slightly shaken to facilitate the regular and more
speedy cooling of the whole by the current of air, which should be as cold and dry
as possible.
By another improvement or arrangement suitable for the endless chain or
continuous baking ovens the biscuits could be delivered regularly therefrom on to an
endless wire-gauze travelling band or web, preferably with an elastic or flexible
band at the edges to keep the biscuits on, this wire-gauze web with the biscuits
traversing over the top of a long air conduit close at the sides and bottom, but

page_text: having the air blown into it at different apertures controlled by valves or slides from
the air blast pipes leading direct from the fanners or other blowers; or otherwise
the perforated trays of biscuits could be so traversed over endless chains instead of
traversing the wire-gauze web with the biscuits on it. To insure the thorough
cooling of the dry air in any of these arrangements, it might be passed through surface
tubes or plate ducts leading through close chambers containing ice or other cooling
medium, or having a current of cold water circulating through it, which would
prevent the moisture from affecting the dryness of the air being cooled.
The more quick or sudden cooling of the biscuits (than has heretofore been done)
by artificial means, which has the effect of tempering or solidifying them, being the
essential feature and advantage of this Invention, it may also be attained by other
somewhat equivalent means with the expenditure of a little more labour, as by
spreading the biscuits on the top of metal trays, tables, or boxes, cooled by currents
of cold air or water passed into or through them from blowing or circulating pumps
or other fluid forcing apparatus, or cooled by ice or other freezing medium.