Seed drill China, and later a seed drill by Jethro Tull that was influential in the growth of farming technology in recent centuries. Even for a century after Tull, hand sowing of grain remained common. In older methods of planting, a field is initially prepared with a plow to a series of linear cuts known as "furrows". The field is then seeded by throwing the seeds over the field, a method known as "manual broadcasting". The seeds may not be sown to the right depth nor the proper distance from one another. Seeds that land in the furrows have better protection from
Drill uses a rotating helical screw similar to the Archimedean screw-shaped bit that is common today. The gimlet is also worth mentioning as it is a scaled down version of an auger. In the East, churn drills were invented as early as 221 BC during the Chinese Qin Dynasty, capable of reaching a depth of 1500 m. Churn drills in ancient China were built of wood and labor-intensive, but were able to go through solid rock. The churn drill appears in Europe during the 12th century. In 1835 Isaac Singer is reported to have built a steam powered churn drill based