Otto Wilke (agricultural technician)

Otto Wilke (born September 12, 1867 in Harber , Hanover Province , Kingdom of Prussia ; † October 13, 1947 ibid) was a German agricultural technology pioneer and inventor of the beet harvester .

life and work

In addition to his main job as a farmer, Wilke dealt with the mechanization and improvement of harvesting methods in order to save labor and make work easier.

Beet harvester

The feeler wheel with many pins, also known as the "hedgehog button", was a novelty and therefore decisive for its functionality and patentability. In the patent specification for the "topping device on beet harvesting machines" it says:

Beet harvesting machines have become known which also cut off the beet leaves or heads and put them aside and for this purpose are provided with feeler wheels, head knives, clearing and conveying devices. In the known devices, the speared and cut beet head comes into contact with the field, so that the leaves are soiled, and is still squeezed when taken over by the belt or when being stripped from the feeler wheel. In contrast, it is the special task of the invention to harvest the cut material so gently and cleanly that it can be made fully available to the economy. In this sense, the device according to the invention is intended to prevent the material from being kinked and squashed and falling back onto the ground from the feeler wheel or on its way to the collecting container.

The invention consists in that from the sloping backward-rising holders of the head knife on the one hand and the jockey wheel and the clearing device on the other hand, a channel rising up to the conveyor belts is formed in which the material is pushed up by the jockey wheel from below and through the top Clearing device is fed head first to the conveyor belts. Advantageously, the backs of the sawtooth-like discs of the clearing device are allowed to strike the material in order to prevent damage.

Wilke develops the beet harvester together with master locksmith Heinrich Meisoll from Hohenhameln. They demonstrated the first “handicraft machine” in public when it was functional. Meanwhile, on 5./12. August 1933, Wilke had signed a license agreement with Friedrich Krupp AG in Essen . Together with the first factory-built machine, Krupp passed the license on to Heinrich Lanz AG in Mannheim in 1936 . Lanz also built a machine, but did not start series production. The machines were lost in the hail of bombs of World War II. After the war ended, the patent was expropriated by the Allies. The Stoll company in Torgau , now located in Lengede- Broistedt, until 1945 , succeeded in buying the expropriated "beet harvester patent" and manufactured beet harvesters in series. For many years the green-painted machines with the “Stoll” logo were market leaders.

Crop lifter / stalk lifter, grain divider / track divider

In addition to his work for the beet harvester, Otto Wilke worked on improvements to the mower binder. The grain - long stalks were common back then, because the straw was needed for keeping animals - was not always vertical. Different influences often resulted in “stored grain”, the stalks then lay more horizontally or were also swirled by the influence of the wind. In order to enable mowing with a mower binder even under such conditions, he developed devices for mowing stored grain: crop lifters / stalk lifters, grain dividers / track dividers. These components attached to or next to the cutting unit - initially made by master blacksmith Fritz Bote in Harber - proved to be functional.

Utility models and patents

• Utility model 1 139 728 from August 27, 1930, straw lifter .
• Deutsches Reichs-Nutz-Muster (DRGM) 1 184 063 of August 6, 1931, device for binder mowers for mowing stored grain .
• Patent application W.86613 III / 45c2 from August 4, 1931, device for binder mowers for mowing stored grain .
• Patent application W.88727 III / 45c2 dated August 15, 1931, device for binding mowers for mowing stored grain (track divider with springy tip) .
• Deutsches Reichs-Nutz-Muster (DRGM) 1 187 276 from August 16, 1931, device for mowing stored grain .
• German Reichs-Usage-Sample (DRGM) 1 188 074 of September 10, 1931, device for reels on binding mowers .
• Reich Patent Office, patent specification no. 649 967, class 45 c; Gruppe 1901, W 90048 III / 45 c, topping device on beet harvesting machines , date of the announcement of the granting of the patent: August 26, 1937, patented in the German Empire on October 8, 1932.

literature

• Rolf Ahlers : Otto Wilke, the inventor of the beet harvester ; in: Braunschweigische Heimat 98/2 (Ed .: Braunschweigischer Landesverein für Heimatschutz eV); Braunschweig: Appelhans Verlag, 2012 [1]
• Frank Emmerich: The breakthrough came with the hedgehog button ; in: Der Goldene Pflug Edition 39 (Ed .: Board of Directors of the German Agricultural Museum Association); Stuttgart-Hohenheim, 2017 [2]

Individual evidence

1. ^ Reichspatentamt, patent specification No. 649 967, class 45 c; Gruppe 1901, W 90048 III / 45 c, date of the announcement of the grant of the patent: August 26, 1937, Otto Wilke in Harber b. Hohenhameln, topping device on beet harvesting machines, patented in the German Reich on October 8, 1932.