If our forefathers had been told that before they had lain long is their graves a machine would be invented by which flour and water could be mixed together at one end, and brought out at the other ready baked biscuits, they would have doubted the sanity of the person addressing them. Yet, strange as it may seem. this is a task now all but accomplished, and in operation every working-day at the extensive ship-bread bakery of Mr. Thomas Harrison, Mersey-street, late of Wapping. Various machines are now used for the baking of ship and other biscuits, but the one patented by Mr. Harrison differs from those hitherto in use, in size, in utility, and in adaptation for the firing of the bread, of the hot-air principle, now the property of the Patent Desiccating Company. The flour and water is proper proportions are placed in a cylinder, and the first operation of thoroughly mixing is performed by arms inside. On leaving the cylinder, the dough. is kneaded by means of a large iron cylinder, under which it is passed several times. The required thickness is attained on passing beneath a smaller cylinder. The dough, spread like a large sheet, passes along an endless cloth, the machinery moving at each stroke the precise width of a biscuit. As the dough passes along, by the rising and falling of a nicely adjusted piece of mechanism, the biscuits are cut into shape and receive the stamp of the patentee.

The biscuits are not circular, but have six sides, and, therefore, there is not, in cutting out, any waste of dough, except a small portion at each end. Passing along the endless cloth, the biscuits are conducted to the mouth of the oven, where they are received on what may be called, for familiar illustration, an endless gridiron, which, as the machine moves, draws in the biscuits in a few seconds. Each oven is 4� feet in width, and 26� feet in length. There are four ovens, one above another, and all fed from the same furnace with hot water. The mixing of the flour and water occupies about twelve minutes, the kneading five or six, and the firing half an hour. As each oven contains 650 biscuits, and may be filled within a few minutes of each other, there is no difficulty in producing from flour and water no fewer than 2600 biscuits in an hour, or nearly a ton of ship biscuits every two hours. The biscuits too, are of excellent quality - beautifully crisp and sweet. It is difficult to convey to the reader a correct idea of the operation of so ingenious. clever, and useful a piece of machinery, Messrs. W. and M. Scott, of the Tranmere Foundry, are the manufacturers. Liverpool Mail

SG & SGTL Vol 7, p. 79 ; 16 Mar 1850.

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