History of the horse in Britain drawn by two horses, the "Dutch plough", was used in eastern England; this was followed in 1730 by the lightweight Rotherham plough, an unwheeled, or "swing" plough. It was advertised as reducing ploughing times by a third, or using a third less horsepower for the same ploughing time. The improved seed drill and horse-hoe were invented by Jethro Tull in 1731; but it took more than 100 years for these designs to come into common use. The earliest horse-powered threshing machines, which were installed permanently in barns, were developed towards the end of the 18th century. The use of fast
Shaker Seed Company brown paper with the seed variety name, where the seeds came from, and sometimes the grower's name. The first paper packets were pieces of paper cut into eight different sizes for the different seed types. The small paper envelopes were made by hand and folded and glued accordingly. Ebenezer Alden invented a printing block device for printing the envelopes by hand. Specific machines were made early in the nineteenth century to speed the process of cutting and printing the packets. New Lebanon Shaker journals referred to the seed packet sizes as: pound-bag size, bean size, beet size, onion size, cucumber