Harvester Niva - the pride of Soviet engineering

With the beginning of autumn in agricultural regions, the harvest season begins. Heavy machinery moves to the fields in order to facilitate difficult work for farmers. But few know that the combine Niva, which is quite firmly entrenched in our everyday life, has been known for a long time. The first models appeared in the USA in the distant 1828. More precisely, not the machines themselves, but a patent for them. Unfortunately, the apparatus that cut the spikelets, threshed and peeled the wheat from the chaff was not built. The first such technique was built in the Russian Empire in 1830. It consisted of a threshing apparatus, a fan and a screen. Three years later a collapsible car was built. She worked in the fields so far, while in Europe human labor continued to be used. The original prototype combine harvester in the same period came up in Australia. Today, there are special machines for cereals, forage and grass, sugar beet, potatoes and even for harvesting berries.

The Niva combine harvester has been the pride of the domestic machine-building industry for many years. The legendary model SK-5 Niva has been a constant attribute of golden fields with ripe wheat for several decades. This is one of the first models of self-propelled machinery that did not need the traction power of a tractor, horses or other animals. Already later on its basis appeared an improved combine Niva Effect.

The combine harvester has a very complex design. It consistently performs a number of operations: cutting off the spikelets, transporting them to the threshing apparatus, threshing the grain, separating the grains and husks, feeding the cleaned bread to the bunker and unloading from it. In fact, the Niva harvester combines the functions of three types of more simple equipment: header, thresher and winnowing machine.

Combine harvester Niva at one time became a revolution. Its innovation not only allowed to increase the productivity of agriculture and labor, it witnessed significant technological progress. And let them say today that the machines gave a large percentage of the loss of grain, but then they were the optimal solution for the collective farms. In addition, very few people know that the mass production of such machines had one more, hidden purpose. The release of combines meant the production of special components that could transform a peaceful unit into an armored vehicle for military operations. The factory workers were trained in secret conditions so that they knew what to do if the army needs their help.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, overseas samples came to the expanses of fifteen republics and now independent states. The famous combine Niva began to lose ground, because he lagged far behind his competitors. It was significantly higher: fuel consumption, grain loss, service life and maintainability. And in foreign cars it was more comfortable to work: much less noise and vibration, a more comfortable seat and the availability of additional functions. But still, in many large and small villages in the fields, you can still see the red giant, which embodies the greatness of the past era.