SHEEP-SHEARING by ELECTRICITY.

Patea Mail, 17 April 1882, Page 3

SHEEP-SHEARING by ELECTRICITY.

Mr Edison lias rcfeircd to the Scientific American a communication from Now Zealand, in which the writer sets forth at length the pressing need of some menus of shearing sheep evenly, rapidly, and without risk of hurting the animal. The writer thinks that an electrical apparatus might be made to answer, the cutting to ho done hy means of a wire highly heated by an electric current. The length of the healed wire or cutter would have to be about Sin. The use of an incandescent wire of platinum for cutting has been entirely successful in surgery, in removing tumors and other diseased and morbid growths, and there is a possibility that it might answer for cutting wool. Whether the heated wire would injure the wool, or whether the accumulation of ash would speedily make the cutter inoperative, are questions which trial can decide. Some years ago patents were taken out for a method of felling timber by the use of wire electrically heated, but when the method was put to practical test it failed, as the ash of the burnt wood soon surrounded the wire with a fire-proof shield. Whether a similar difficulty-would arise from the coating of the wire with wool ash and charred wool on applying the method to wool cutting, and whether this or other possible difficulties can be easily overcome in an electrical shearer, can be determined only by trial.