Resource Type

States

Automatic Railway Signal. (open access)

Automatic Railway Signal.

Patent for a new and improved railroad signal. This design, "[w]hen the wheels of a passing train come in contact with the spring and bent end of the lever . . . said end is lowered or depressed, causing the movement in the same direction of the outer end of said lever, which, through the agency of the wire, will cause the ringing or sounding of the gong or bell as the wheels . . . come in contact with the end of the lever. . . .[A]fter the wheels of the last car of a train have passed the point where the lever is located, said lever will be returned to its normal position by means of the coil-spring" (lines 57-71).
Date: October 16, 1888
Creator: Ross, Albert James & Darter, John T.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Cultivator. (open access)

Cultivator.

Patent for a new and improved cultivator. This design "is to produce . . . cultivators [that] can be adjusted laterally in relation to each other and turned at any desirable angle, and in which the frame and the beam can be made to stand at any desired angle to each other" (lines 17-23). It consists in "a semicircular frame, two vertical plates secured to the ends of the said frame and having their upper edges serrated, blocks placed between the plates, the plates, bolts for clamping them to opposite edges of the vertical plates, and the cultivators which pass through the plates and the beam" (lines 8-15).
Date: December 16, 1890
Creator: Ford, John Owen
System: The Portal to Texas History