the.com/seed drill
The machine that stopped humans from flinging seeds into the wind and praying.
means A farming machine that plants seeds in the soil at a set depth and spacing, in neat rows, instead of scattering them by hand.
from 'Drill' here isn't about boring holes — it comes from an older sense of the word meaning a small furrow or trickle, likely related to the verb 'to drill' meaning to trickle or dribble, since the machine dribbles seeds out in a thin, controlled stream. Seed drills existed in basic forms for centuries, notably in ancient civilizations, but the name stuck in English agricultural vocabulary once mechanized versions spread through farming in the 1700s, turning sowing from guesswork into geometry.
- invented by
- Jethro Tull, 1701, not the band
- solved problem
- random scattering wasted most seeds sown
- result
- rows seeds, precise depth, massive yield jump
- legacy
- kickstarted the British Agricultural Revolution