Rotary Cotton-Chopper (open access)

Rotary Cotton-Chopper

Patent for "new and useful improvements in rotary cotton-choppers" (lines 4-5) that are of "the class of cotton-choppers which travel across the rows, and also to the class which use a revolving drum having blades or hoes spirally arranged on its periphery" (lines 13-17), including descriptions and illustrations.
Date: June 8, 1880
Creator: Lee, John C.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Spark Arrester for Smoke Stacks. (open access)

Spark Arrester for Smoke Stacks.

Patent for a new and improved spark arrester. This design consists "a direct flue or smoke-stack . . . [which] projects and deflects the sparks or cinders through perforations in a vertical wall of a stack into a dead-air space that surrounds the draft-flue, there causing these sparks . . . to impinge against vertical ribs that subdivide the annular air-space that intervenes between an inner and outer cylindrical wall of the stack, gravity of the accumulating mass of cinders causing their discharge . . . through gates that are opened by the weight of the sparks above them and closed by their own gravity" (lines 15-30).
Date: June 21, 1887
Creator: Wilson, Martin M.
System: The Portal to Texas History
Quilting Frame. (open access)

Quilting Frame.

Patent for a new and improved quilting-frame. This design consists in "the combination, with a suspended track-beam, of a block carrying at the upper end journaled wheels which travel on said beam, a quilting-frame swiveled to said block and having inside loops at the lower end, and the quilting-roll end plates movable through said loops, as shown, whereby the quilt may be balanced, turned in a horizontal plane to a greater or less degree, and fed to the sewing machine" (lines 52-61).
Date: June 26, 1888
Creator: Vestal, Charles A.
System: The Portal to Texas History