There is no society with any sort of industry, imports and exports, or connection to the modern world that does not find conveyor uses invaluable. Although this technology was not brought into practicality until the twentieth century, the idea behind it is ancient. Many people knew that a group of individuals could do more transporting of a commodity when each one stood in place and passed the item to the next person.
Think of stevedores unloading freight. The man in the ship does not hoist the bag or bale onto his shoulder and clamber onto the dock. He passes it to one already on land, who often hands it off to another. People fighting a fire fill buckets and pass them along a line in order to speed up delivery.
A conveyor was first used in the mining industry, which today has the longest ones in existence. A moving belt is the easiest way to move loose ore up from underground and then to storage piles and loading areas. Trucks and railroad cars are also loaded by moving under hoppers or chutes filled by the same method.
Basically the system is a loop of material that is pulled along between two pulleys, rotates over the end, and goes back underneath to begin the process over again. One or both pulleys will be powered by an electric motor (although many areas without electricity use another fuel.)
There are many variations of the earliest designs used in mining and in Henry Ford’s famous assembly line in Michigan, begun in 1913. The labor-reducing devices have enabled industry to increase production and keep costs down as much or more than any other invention. Even third-world countries use the technology. Poor people who are too crippled to sort trash on open dumps sometimes can get work sorting it as it moves past them on a primitive system set up by those who but recyclables and things of value found in the trash.
Mining and industry are not alone in using the technology. Farmers use them to send hay through the baling machine and to send the bales up to a hay loft for storage, and to handle grain. Retailers have moving tables that carry items to the checker, who no longer has to reach for things. Airports move baggage from the inner unloading bays to the outer carousel where passengers await, and to help passengers get from gate to gate by providing moving sidewalks and escalators.
The belts may be supported by flat pans, by a series of rollers, or by chains, depending on the weight of the object to be moved, the speed of the line, and other factors. New technology has made it possible to carry items around corners, lift them straight up as well as along steep inclines, and to stock retail displays with neat rows of merchandise. Think of bottling milk, sodas, and beers – all those bottles moving along to be filled and capped.
Conveyor uses make the commercial world go round, just like the belts that carry your groceries in a check-out lane or your baggage to an airport carousel.
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