n. One who or that which discharges.n. In transportation, a machine or appliance used in discharging freight, coal, grain, or other material in bulk, from a carrier, conveyer, or elevator. The most simple form is an opening at the end or bottom, at any point of the trough of a conveyer through which the load is pushed by the screw or the flights of the conveyer machine (see conveyer). In open carriers, belt-conveyers, and elevators the discharger may be the end wheel over which the belt or series of buckets passes, the change in direction (assisted by the momentum) serving to discharge the load upon a table or into a bin, hopper, spout, or another conveyer. Dischargers are divided into stationary machines that trip, upset, or invert the buckets of a horizontal conveyer and cause them to discharge their loads at a fixed point, and machines that travel along the line of the conveyer and automatically discharge the loads at any desired point. Also called automatic dumpern. In mining and industrial railroading, a device for unloading skips, ore-cars, etc., upon inclined roads or slopes. One device consists of an open abrupt change in the grade of the track, whereby the forward end of the car, to which the hauling-cable is attached, is tilted up and the load discharged through a gate at the rear. Another device employs two tracks at the dumping-point, and a skip with four wheels of which the rear pair have a wider tread than the forward pair. The skip is hauled by a cable attached to a link pivoted at the rear end of the skip; and when the discharger is reached the forward wheels follow the inside or narrow tracks, which here run in a horizontal direction, while the rear wheels continue on the inclined rails. This causes the skip to be tilted up, discharging the load at the front and open end. When empty, the skip runs back down the incline in its normal or loaded position.
