Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 37.djvu/227

 in his Danish rendering of W. Dell's ‘Treatise on Baptism,’ London, 1706. An English version appeared in ‘The Irish Friend.’ In it he gives his reasons for joining the society, and takes affectionate leave of his former congregation.

Meidel became a quaker minister, and about 1708 visited Friedrickstadt and other towns in Holstein, where the Friends were suffering persecution. In travelling through France he was arrested, detained at Pont and St. Lys, and finally carried to Paris. There he was brought through the streets chained to other prisoners, and preached repentance to the people standing by, who freely offered him money, which he refused. On 22 Aug. 1708 he wrote to William Sewel [q. v.] from the Grand Châtelet, asking for money to be remitted.

Meidel seems to have died abroad, as the registers at Devonshire House contain no record of his death.

Besides the above translations, Meidel also published both French and Danish versions of Penn's ‘Key Opening a Way … to Discern the Difference,’ &c., in 1701 and 1705 respectively. Of his Danish translation of Barclay's ‘Apology,’ the Meeting for Sufferings, in a minute, 11 Jan. 1717, ordered five hundred copies to be printed. The earliest edition known is 1738. It was reprinted at Stavanger, 1848. ‘Directions to collect matter for a general History of the Progress of Truth in our Age,’ fol., 1706, and ‘A Preface to the Reader,’ inserted in the third part of ‘Piety Promoted, in a collection of the dying sayings of many of the people called quakers,’ by John Tomkins [q. v.], 1706, 12mo, are also by Meidel. 

MEIKLE, ANDREW (1719–1811), millwright and inventor of the thrashing-machine, born in 1719, was son of James Meikle, who went to Holland on behalf of Andrew Fletcher of Salton to gain a knowledge of the art of making pot barley [see, 1655–1716]. Andrew established himself as a millwright at Houston Mill, near Dunbar, and in 1768, in conjunction with Robert Mackell, obtained a patent (No. 896) for a machine for dressing grain.

Meikle's chief invention was the well-known drum thrashing-machine, which cannot be dated earlier than 1784. Six years before that date he had, however, constructed a completely different thrashing-machine, which seems to have been identical with one patented in 1734 by Michael Menzies [q. v.] A trial of Meikle's first machine took place in February 1778 before a number of farmers in the neighbourhood, who appended their names to a report printed in Wight's ‘Present State of Agriculture in Scotland,’ ii. 491. Among them was George Rennie of Phantassie, East Lothian, father of John Rennie [q. v.], the engineer, who served an apprenticeship to Meikle. The machine was not successful, and nothing more is heard of it.

About 1784 Francis Kinloch, a gentleman farmer of Gilmerton, East Lothian, while travelling in Northumberland, saw a thrashing-machine at Wark, and on returning home he caused a model to be made. After repeated trials, all of which were unsuccessful, it was sent in 1784 to Meikle's shop, where it was tried at a high velocity and again failed, the machine being destroyed in the experiment. Meikle saw where the fault lay, and conceived the idea of a drum strong enough to run at a great speed, armed with fixed scutchers or beaters, which should beat and not rub out the grain, as the previous machines had done. Kinloch also used a drum, but made in a different way, and a controversy respecting Meikle's indebtedness to Kinloch followed (cf. Farmers' Magazine, Edinburgh, December 1811, p. 483;, Reply to an Address to the Public … on … the Thrashing-Machine). It has also been alleged that Meikle only adapted the well-known flax-scutching mill for the purpose of thrashing grain, and it is not unimportant to point out that the words ‘scutchers’ and ‘scutching’ are used throughout his specification. J. A. Ransome (Implements of Agriculture, p. 146) gives a series of diagrams showing the exact form of the ‘beaters,’ as they are now called, upon which the efficiency of Meikle's machine depends.

Meikle communicated his ideas to his second son, George, then residing at Alloa, who in February 1786 completed a machine for Mr. Stein, a large distiller and farmer at Kilbeggie, Clackmannanshire. In the following year Andrew Meikle made a machine to be worked by horses for George Rennie. He took out a patent for the invention in 1788 (No. 1645), but it was for England only, no application being made for a Scottish patent, because he had destroyed his right to a valid patent for Scotland by publicly using his invention before making his application. He seems to have commenced the manufacture of thrashing-machines as a business in 1789 (see his advertisement in the Scots Magazine for May 1789, p. 211). ‘In all its essential parts, and in the principle of its construction, it remains as it came from the hands of its