Evaristo Conrado Engelberg
| Evaristo Conrado Engelberg | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born | October 26, 1853 Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Died | 1932 Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil |
| Occupation | mechanical engineer, inventor and businessman |
Evaristo Conrado Engelberg (26 October 1853 – 1932) was a Brazilian mechanical engineer and inventor. He is the inventor of the Engelberg huller, a machine used to strip the husks from rice and coffee during the milling process. He was born to German immigrants in Piracicaba, São Paulo, Brazil.
In 1885, while constructing a water wheel, Engelberg observed a group of slaves stripping the hulls from rice with pestles by hand, the main method of cleaning rice at the time. Engelberg experimented with the method and found that by rubbing the rice between his fingers while applying pressure, the hulls were easily removed. He returned to his workshop and immediately began working on a machine that he finished the next day, thus creating the first horizontal cylinder rice "peeler." The invention was named the Engelberg Huller and soon was adapted to work with coffee. Once it made it to market, the device revolutionized the processing of coffee and rice throughout the world.
There was some initial resistance to the machine from ranchers and farmers in Brazil, who preferred to use slave labor throughout the year for these and other processes, rather than investing the money in the machines invented by Engelberg, which would be useful only during harvest. Despite this initial resistance, the peelers was eventually adopted by major growers of the region. With the strong development of his business, in June 1885, Engelberg partnered with Earl Siciliano to found Engelberg & Siciliano which was headquartered in Piracicaba.
During 1885, Engelberg received a British patent for a rice-hulling machine.
Three years later, on December 27, 1888, Engelberg applied for a United States patent on the coffee-hulling machine. U.S. patent (number 424,602) for a rice-hulling machine, was granted on April 1, 1890. With this machine, hulling and polishing, which removes different layers below the husk, could be done in several stages "during the same passage," a process that automated a manual task.
...
Wikipedia