Combine

combine (kŏm`bīn), agricultural machine that performs both harvesting and threshing operations. Although it was not widely used until the 1930s, the combine was in existence as early as 1830. Early combines were traction-powered and drawn by horses, or later, driven by steam and internal-combustion engines. Self-propelled units appeared in the 1940s and have been adopted worldwide. Modern units feature dust-free, air-conditioned cabs and can handle more than 100 acres (41 hectares) of grain per day. Originally developed for cereal grains, the combine has been adapted to legumes, forage grasses, sorghum, and corn. The basic operations of a combine include cutting and gathering the standing crop, threshing the seed from the stem, separating the chaff, collecting the seed in a hopper for delivery to a truck, and returning the straw to the ground. The combine has replaced the reaper; the binder, which cut and bound a harvested crop into bundles ready for threshing; and the thresher.

Bibliography

See C. Culpin, Farm Machinery (12th ed. 1992).

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combine

Business an association of enterprises, esp in order to gain a monopoly of a market

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Combine 

(industry), in the USSR, a production association of enterprises that ordinarily do not have legal independence and are managed by the directors of a head enterprise. There are three main types of combines. The first unites several technologically related specialized production processes in different sectors, sequentially processing or making comprehensive use of raw materials, scrap, and by-products. The second is an administrative association of technologically unrelated enterprises in one sector, for example, a combine in the coal industry. The third is an association of small diverse production facilities that often are unrelated technologically, for example, a municipal and domestic service combine or a raion industrial combine.

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Combine 

(Russian, kombain), a machine aggregate, a set of working machines simultaneously performing several different operations. The cycle of operations performed by the combine usually results in a finished product. The variety of combines is widest in agriculture (grain, potato, sugar beet, and other harvesters) and in mining (cutting and extracting combines). Combines are also becoming common in preparing food.