Before the advent of the Oliver Straitoplane or double surfacers. A big, really big jointer was not uncommon in many a shop. Porter, Newman, Whitney amongst others made them. 

The largest I used was about 20" and had a feeder on it. Feeder was similar in design to the ones seen today for shapers and table saws.  It had serrated rollers, instead of rubber as is common today, the rollers chain driven. That  Jointer was huge! Until I saw that thing I thought a 36" Greenlee planer was big. No recollection of the size of the motors, there were two, one for the feeder and one for the cutterhead which I think was a 4 knife head.


You would go to the wood pile and pull out a Teak plank( along with 3 or 4 other men :-), and wrestle it on to the infeed table, set the feeder to a reasonable 'guesstimation' of the thickness and let 'er go. No chip removal so someone, me the apprentice, would stand there with a straw broom and sweep the chips off the plank, being very careful not to let the broom get caught by the rollers.

This was definitely pre-OSHA time.

The racket was deafening, worse than the Greelee planer. It did the job though and then the plank was ready for that 36"er for the other side.We called them 'Facers'.  Last yard that I worked in that had one, when the motor burned up they just went to running the rough plank through the planer a couple of times.
I also think that the mills were doing a better job with the re-sawing later on.