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Bulcher, Texas

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Bulcher is a small unincorporated community in far northwestern Cooke County , Texas , United States. According to the Handbook of Texas , only six people lived in the community in 2000. It is located within the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex .

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44-611: John A. Dennis and his family are credited with being the first homesteaders in the area when they relocated to the site in 1872. Subsequent settlers included Matthew A. Morris, the postmaster upon the establishment of the post office in 1874, and John Scanland, who gave land for the Scanland Cemetery east and south of Bulcher. William H. Cox was another early inhabitant who constructed a cotton gin in Bulcher in 1875. The population stayed relatively steady at 250 until June 24, 1926, when oil

88-405: A patent of his cotton gin on October 28, 1793; the patent was granted on March 14, 1794, but was not validated until 1807. Whitney's patent was assigned patent number 72X. There is slight controversy over whether the idea of the modern cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Eli Whitney. The popular image of Whitney inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on

132-485: A modified Forbes version, one man and a boy could produce 250 pounds per day. If oxen were used to power 16 of these machines, and a few people's labor was used to feed them, they could produce as much work as 750 people did formerly. The Indian roller cotton gin, known as the churka or charkha , was introduced to the United States in the mid-18th century, when it was adopted in the southern United States . The device

176-418: A result, the region became even more dependent on plantations that used black slave labor, with plantation agriculture becoming the largest sector of its economy. While it took a single laborer about ten hours to separate a single pound of fiber from the seeds, a team of two or three slaves using a cotton gin could produce around fifty pounds of cotton in just one day. The number of slaves rose in concert with

220-627: A screw to crush the raw materials in a continuous process, before extraction of the oil from the press cake using a centrifuge or a solvent such as hexane . Edible oils may be extracted for culinary purposes. Non-edible oils can be used in the manufacture of soaps saponification , biodisel production biodiesel , paints and varnishes, or as fuel for oil lamps. Important feed stocks include soybeans , rapeseed ( canola ), sunflower seeds , cottonseed , and maize (corn), as well as peanuts , olives , various nuts, sesame seeds , safflower , grape seeds , flaxseed ( linseed ), and Mustard oil which

264-469: A single roller made of iron or wood and a flat piece of stone or wood. The earliest evidence of the cotton gin is found in the fifth century, in the form of Buddhist paintings depicting a single-roller gin in the Ajanta Caves in western India . These early gins were difficult to use and required a great deal of skill. A narrow single roller was necessary to expel the seeds from the cotton without crushing

308-404: A small scale. Whitney's gin is made with two rotating cylinders. The first cylinder has lines of teeth around the circumference, and angled against this cylinder is a metal plate with small holes, "ginning ribs", through which the teeth can fit with minimal gaps. The teeth grip the cotton fibers as the mechanism rotates, dragging them through these small holes. The seeds are too big to fit through

352-421: A system gin, and obtained related patents. The Munger System Ginning Outfit (or system gin) integrated all the ginning operation machinery, thus assuring the cotton would flow through the machines smoothly. Such system gins use air to move cotton from machine to machine. Munger's motivation for his inventions included improving employee working conditions in the gin. However, the selling point for most gin owners

396-633: Is also five miles south of the Red River , and is on Farm to Market Road 2382 . Today, the community is served by the Saint Jo Independent School District . Cotton gin A cotton gin —meaning "cotton engine " —is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. The separated seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil . Handheld roller gins had been used in

440-479: The Indian subcontinent since at earliest AD 500 and then in other regions. The Indian worm-gear roller gin was invented sometime around the 16th century and has, according to Lakwete, remained virtually unchanged up to the present time. A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794. Whitney's gin used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull

484-487: The crank handle in the cotton gin, first appeared sometime during the late Delhi Sultanate or the early Mughal Empire. The incorporation of the worm gear and crank handle into the roller cotton gin led to greatly expanded Indian cotton textile production during the Mughal era. It was reported that, with an Indian cotton gin, which is half machine and half tool, one man and one woman could clean 28 pounds of cotton per day. With

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528-522: The 16th century. This mechanical device was, in some areas, driven by waterpower. The worm gear roller gin, which was invented in the Indian subcontinent during the early Delhi Sultanate era of the 13th to 14th centuries, came into use in the Mughal Empire sometime around the 16th century, and is still used in the Indian subcontinent through to the present day. Another innovation, the incorporation of

572-474: The American Civil War. In modern cotton production, cotton arrives at industrial cotton gins either in trailers, in compressed rectangular " modules " weighing up to 10 metric tons each or in polyethylene wrapped round modules similar to a bale of hay produced during the picking process by the most recent generation of cotton pickers. Trailer cotton (i.e. cotton not compressed into modules) arriving at

616-529: The South. Additionally, the greatly expanded supply of cotton created strong demand for textile machinery and improved machine designs that replaced wooden parts with metal. This led to the invention of many machine tools in the early 19th century. The invention of the cotton gin caused massive growth in the production of cotton in the United States, concentrated mostly in the South. Cotton production expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830 to 2.85 million bales in 1850. As

660-412: The chemical composition in processing, there is difficulty in creating a consistent ethanol process, but there is potential to further maximize the utilization of waste in cotton production. Notes Bibliography Oil mill An oil mill is a grinding mill designed to crush or bruise oil-bearing seeds, such as linseed or peanuts , or other oil-rich vegetable material, such as olives or

704-522: The cleaning of seeds from short-staple cotton, it damaged the fibers of extra-long staple cotton ( Gossypium barbadense ). In 1840 Fones McCarthy received a patent for a "Smooth Cylinder Cotton-gin", a roller gin. McCarthy's gin was marketed for use with both short-staple and extra-long staple cotton but was particularly useful for processing long-staple cotton. After McCarthy's patent expired in 1861, McCarthy type gins were manufactured in Britain and sold around

748-444: The cotton gin by 1796. However, the evidence indicates Whitney did invent the saw gin, for which he is famous. Although he spent many years in court attempting to enforce his patent against planters who made unauthorized copies, a change in patent law ultimately made his claim legally enforceable – too late for him to make much money from the device in the single year remaining before the patent expired. While Whitney's gin facilitated

792-454: The cotton gin led to an increase in the use of slaves on Southern plantations. Because of that inadvertent effect on American slavery, which ensured that the South's economy developed in the direction of plantation-based agriculture (while encouraging the growth of the textile industry elsewhere, such as in the North), the invention of the cotton gin is frequently cited as one of the indirect causes of

836-569: The cotton is held by rapidly rotating saw cylinders. The gin stand uses the teeth of rotating saws to pull the cotton through a series of "ginning ribs", which pull the fibers from the seeds which are too large to pass through the ribs. The cleaned seed is then removed from the gin via an auger conveyor system. The seed is reused for planting or is sent to an oil mill to be further processed into cottonseed oil and cottonseed meal . The lint cleaners again use saws and grid bars, this time to separate immature seeds and any remaining foreign matter from

880-472: The cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also inadvertently led to the growth of slavery in the American South . Whitney's gin made cotton farming more profitable and efficient so plantation owners expanded their plantations and used more of their slaves to pick cotton. Whitney never invented

924-478: The culmination of what geographer Charles S. Aiken has termed the second ginning revolution, in which the privately owned plantation gins were replaced by large-scale public ginneries. This revolution, in turn, led to a major restructuring of the cotton gin industry, as the small, scattered gin factories and shops of the nineteenth century gave way to a dwindling number of large twentieth-century corporations designing and constructing entire ginning operations." One of

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968-713: The few (and perhaps only) examples of a Munger gin left in existence is on display at Frogmore Plantation in Louisiana. Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds. With Eli Whitney's gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable business, creating many fortunes in the Antebellum South . Cities such as New Orleans, Louisiana ; Mobile, Alabama ; Charleston, South Carolina ; and Galveston, Texas became major shipping ports, deriving substantial economic benefit from cotton raised throughout

1012-425: The fibers ("lint") in the bolls are tightly interwoven with seeds. To make the fibers usable, the seeds and fibers must first be separated, a task which had been previously performed manually, with production of cotton requiring hours of labor for the separation. Many simple seed-removing devices had been invented, but until the innovation of the cotton gin, most required significant operator attention and worked only on

1056-460: The fibers. The bale press then compresses the cotton into bales for storage and shipping. Modern gins can process up to 15 tonnes (33,000 lb) of cotton per hour. A single-roller cotton gin came into use in India by the 5th century. An improvement invented in India was the two-roller gin, known as the "churka", "charki", or "wooden-worm-worked roller". The earliest versions of the cotton gin consisted of

1100-429: The fibers. The bale press then compresses the cotton into bales for storage and shipping. Modern gins can process up to 15 tonnes (33,000 lb) of cotton per hour. Modern cotton gins create a substantial amount of cotton gin residue (CGR) consisting of sticks, leaves, dirt, immature bolls, and cottonseed. Research is currently under way to investigate the use of this waste in producing ethanol . Due to fluctuations in

1144-411: The fruit of the oil palm , which can then be pressed to extract vegetable oils , which may be used as foods or for cooking, as oleochemical feedstocks , as lubricants , or as biofuels . The pomace or press cake – the remaining solid material from which the oil has been extracted – may also be used as a food or fertilizer. Oil-rich vegetable materials have been processed mechanically to extract

1188-438: The gin is sucked in via a pipe, approximately 16 inches (41 cm) in diameter, that is swung over the cotton. This pipe is usually manually operated but is increasingly automated in modern cotton plants. The need for trailers to haul the product to the gin has been drastically reduced since the introduction of modules. If the cotton is shipped in modules, the module feeder breaks the modules apart using spiked rollers and extracts

1232-469: The gin stand ran smoothly, a condenser to make the clean cotton coming out of the gin easier to handle, and indoor presses so that cotton no longer had to be carried across the gin yard to be baled. Then, in 1879, while he was running his father's gin in Rutersville, Texas , Robert S. Munger invented additional system ginning techniques. Robert and his wife, Mary Collett, later moved to Mexia, Texas , built

1276-575: The holes, and are thus removed from the rotating cotton by the metal plate, before they fall into a collecting pot. On the other side of the first cylinder, there is a second cylinder, also rotating, with brushes attached. This second cylinder wipes the cotton from the first, and deposits it into the collecting bucket. The seed is reused for planting or is sent to an oil mill to be further processed into cottonseed oil and cottonseed meal . The lint cleaners again use saws and grid bars, this time to separate immature seeds and any remaining foreign matter from

1320-496: The increase in cotton production, increasing from around 700,000 in 1790 to around 3.2 million in 1850. The invention of the cotton gin led to increased demands for slave labor in the American South , reversing the economic decline that had occurred in the region during the late 18th century. The cotton gin thus "transformed cotton as a crop and the American South into the globe's first agricultural powerhouse". The invention of

1364-525: The largest pieces of foreign material from the cotton. The module feeder's loose cotton is then sucked into the same starting point as the trailer cotton. The cotton then enters a dryer, which removes excess moisture. The cylinder cleaner uses six or seven rotating, spiked cylinders to break up large clumps of cotton. Finer foreign material, such as soil and leaves, passes through rods or screens for removal. The stick machine uses centrifugal force to remove larger foreign matter, such as sticks and burrs, while

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1408-482: The machine to harvest cotton: it still had to be picked by hand. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War . Modern automated cotton gins use multiple powered cleaning cylinders and saws, and offer far higher productivity than their hand-powered precursors. Cotton fibers are produced in the seed pods ("bolls") of the cotton plant where

1452-469: The original cotton flower, or sticks and other debris attached to the fibers from passing through. A series of brushes on a second rotating cylinder then brushed the now-cleaned fibers loose from the wires, preventing the mechanism from jamming. Many contemporary inventors attempted to develop a design that would process short staple cotton , and Hodgen Holmes, Robert Watkins, William Longstreet , and John Murray had all been issued patents for improvements to

1496-678: The race in 2007. On July 28, 1921, Bulcher had a branch of the Cooke County Library in its vicinity. Bulcher has two cemeteries per the Texas Department of Transportation ; Shiloh, about 2.5 miles east, and Coker, about one mile southwest. Two other early settlers were Frederick and Charles Hyman from Germany . Bulcher is located on Farm to Market Road 373 , 27 mi (43 km) northwest of Gainesville , 10 mi (16 km) northeast of Saint Jo , and 15 mi (24 km) northwest of Muenster in northwestern Cooke County. It

1540-464: The seeds. The design was similar to that of a mealing stone , which was used to grind grain. The early history of the cotton gin is ambiguous, because archeologists likely mistook the cotton gin's parts for other tools. Between the 12th and 14th centuries, dual-roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of the dual-roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by

1584-603: The speed at which the gin could operate. In the middle of the 20th Century gins using a rotating blade replaced ones using a reciprocating blade. These descendants of the McCarthy gin are the only gins now used for extra-long staple cotton in the United States. For a decade and a half after the end of the Civil War in 1865, a number of innovative features became widely used for ginning in the United States. They included steam power instead of animal power, an automatic feeder to assure that

1628-452: The subject written in the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in The Library of Southern Literature . In this article, the author claimed Catharine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental in separating out the seeds and cotton. Greene's alleged role in the invention of the gin has not been verified independently. Whitney's cotton gin model

1672-614: The traditional ghani in Bangladesh, have increasingly been replaced by power-driven steel oil mills. In some areas, watermills may be "double" water mills, with machinery for grinding wheat on one side of the watercourse and machinery for extracting oils on the other side. Historical wind-driven oil mills could process between 100 and 200 tons of raw materials per year. Modern mechanical oil mills can process up to 4,000 tons per day in hot pressing processes, and up to 25 tons per day cold pressed. Industrial oil pressing methods usually use

1716-469: The valuable oils for thousands of years, typically using vertical millstones moving around a central post (edge runner stones or kollergangs in an edge mill ) to crush or bruise the seeds or fruit which can then be stamped or pressed to extract the oil. A treadmill , windmill or watermill was later used to drive the milling and pressing machinery, replaced in modern times with steam and later other power sources. Bullock or horse driven oil mills, such as

1760-513: The world. McCarthy's gin was adopted for cleaning the Sea Island variety of extra-long staple cotton grown in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina. It cleaned cotton several times faster than the older gins, and, when powered by one horse, produced 150 to 200 pounds of lint a day. The McCarthy gin used a reciprocating knife to detach seed from the lint. Vibration caused by the reciprocating motion limited

1804-430: Was adopted for cleaning long-staple cotton but was not suitable for the short-staple cotton that was more common in certain states such as Georgia . Several modifications were made to the Indian roller gin by Mr. Krebs in 1772 and Joseph Eve in 1788, but their uses remained limited to the long-staple variety, up until Eli Whitney's development of a short-staple cotton gin in 1793. Eli Whitney (1765–1825) applied for

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1848-420: Was capable of cleaning 50 pounds (23 kg) of lint per day. The model consisted of a wooden cylinder covered by rows of slender wires which caught the fibers of the cotton bolls. Each row of wires then passed through the bars of a comb-like grid, pulling the cotton fibers through the grid as they did. The comb-like teeth of the grids were closely spaced, preventing the seeds, fragments of the hard dried calyx of

1892-430: Was discovered nearby. Following the ensuing boom, Bulcher started its decline. In 1933, 40 people were living in the village; by 1986, there were 60. The community's population was unknown in the early 1990s, but in 2000 it was reported to only be six. On May 7, 1995, an F3 tornado struck Bulcher. Bulcher is host to the annual Last Man Standing rough-terrain motorcycle race. Polish motorcyclist Tadeusz Błażusiak won

1936-495: Was the accompanying cost savings while producing cotton both more speedily and of higher quality. By the 1960s, many other advances had been made in ginning machinery, but the manner in which cotton flowed through the gin machinery continued to be the Munger system. Economic Historian William H. Phillips referred to the development of system ginning as "The Munger Revolution" in cotton ginning. He wrote, "The Munger innovations were

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