Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Menzies, Michael
MENZIES, MICHAEL (d. 1766), advocate and inventor, had a younger brother who was sheriff-depute of East Lothian (Hepburn, Agriculture of East Lothian, Edinburgh, 1794, p. 147). He was admitted a member of the Faculty of Advocates on 31 Jan. 1719, but the books contain no particulars of his parentage. He probably belonged to the Menzies of Culter-Allers, Lanarkshire (cf. Irving, Upper Ward of Lanarkshire, iii. 145). He was the first to suggest thrashing grain by a machine, and his idea was to imitate the action of the ordinary flail. A number of flails were attached to a horizontal axis, which was moved rapidly to and fro through half a revolution, the grain to be thrashed being placed on either side. He took out a patent for his invention in 1734 (No. 544), and he made a machine, which he brought under the notice of the Society of Improvers in Agriculture, who seemed inclined to think well of it. It is described in the ‘Transactions’ of that body (Edinburgh, 1743, p. 276), and the report is alluded to in the ‘Farmers' Magazine,’ Edinburgh, 1816, xvii. 401. It was not a practical success. Menzies also took out a patent in 1750 (No. 653) for a machine for conveying coal from the face of the working to the bottom of the shaft, and in 1761 he obtained another patent (No. 762) for working and draining coal mines. The specifications of these two patents are of very great length, and the machinery is exceedingly complicated. According to Curr's ‘Coal Viewer's Companion,’ 1797, pp. 33, 35, Menzies's machinery came into use, in part at all events, but the method of raising coals up the shaft was only applicable where a stream of water with a fall of about half the depth of the pit was available. It seems also to have been used at Chatershaugh colliery, on the Wear, in 1753 (cf. Galloway, Coal Mining, p. 112), and it is briefly alluded to by R. Bald in his ‘Coal Trade of Scotland,’ p. 90.
Menzies died at Edinburgh 13 Dec. 1766.
[Scots Magazine, 1766, p. 671; see art. Andrew Meikle.]