Grasshopper Death Machine Fights Farmers’ Insect Menace (May, 1935)
Grasshopper Death Machine Fights Farmers’ Insect Menace
FOR seven years Joseph Dillman, wheat farmer of Strasberg, N. D., stood by helplessly and watched huge swarms of grasshoppers descend upon his grain fields and lay waste to his crops. Then this practical-minded person set about to devise a death machine which would put an end to the destructive insect plagues.
He built a three-wheeled device, screened on all sides except the front. Inside of the box he mounted a propeller, which not only drives the machine forward but sucks the grasshoppers into the trap. The force of the air is claimed to be so great that it will pulverize the bugs, sifting them through the 3/4-inch mesh.