Resource Type

Cattle-Yoke. (open access)

Cattle-Yoke.

Patent for a new and useful cattle yoke for preventing them from breaking, tearing down, jumping over, or crawling through the openings in fences (line 6 -8).
Date: March 22, 1898
Creator: Kirk, Robert S.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Hoisting Apparatus. (open access)

Hoisting Apparatus.

Patent for improvements in hoisting apparatus by “employing two cables and two sheaves that one cable and one sheave operate to elevate the weight or object in an approximately-vertical plane, so as to avoid contact with any side obstruction, while the secondary cable can subsequently be slackened sufficiently to permit the traveling sheave of the hoisting-cable to run off in a lateral direction and carry with it the sheave of the slackened secondary cable, for the purpose of transferring the object or weight to a desired position out of the line of the approximately-vertical direction first given to it.” (Page 2, lines 4-16) Illustration is included.
Date: March 22, 1892
Creator: Davis, Benjamin F.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Fuse for Shells. (open access)

Fuse for Shells.

Patent for a new and improved shell fuse. This design "relates to that type of percussion-fuses wherein a fuse-tube is secured in the point or end of a shell and contains a plunged connected with a friction-wire embedded in the fulminate in such manner that when the flight of the shell is suddenly arrested the friction-wire is drawn forward by the plunger, thereby igniting the fulminate and setting fire to the powder-charge for bursting the shell. The objects of [the] invention are to . . . provide novel means which not only insure bursting of the shell, but avoid premature bursting at the muzzle of the gun" (lines 8-48).
Date: April 22, 1890
Creator: Phillips, George
System: The Portal to Texas History