MECHANIZING THE COTTON HARVEST — STREET 415 



eluded pneumatic extractors, electrical devices, threshers, chemical 

 processes, strippers, and spindle pickers. 5 



UNSUCCESSFUL FORERUNNERS 



Beginning with a patent issued in 1859, some of the most persistent 

 efforts were directed toward the perfection of various types of pneu- 

 matic extractors intended to remove the lint from the boll either by 

 suction or by a blast of air. The machines usually consisted of a 

 vacuum tank mounted on a cart, with flexible hoses applied to the 

 individual bolls by a crew of operators. 6 The chief technical problem 

 was to design a nozzle that would suck (or blow) the tight- fitting 

 locks of cotton from the burr and convey it to a bag. A small amount 

 of cotton was actually picked with a machine of this type in the 

 Imperial Valley of California during a labor crisis in 1918. 



During the twenties the International Harvester Co. made an ex- 

 tensive investigation of both the suction and airblast methods of 

 extraction. Company engineers concluded that a crew of skilled hand 

 pickers could easily outdistance a similar crew working with suction 

 tubes because the unaided human hand is more dextrous than any 

 extractive device which must be applied separately to each boll. 

 They thereafter directed their efforts toward the complete elimination 

 of the manual element from the picking process. 



Efforts by others to devise a successful pneumatic picker continued 

 well into the thirties. 7 W. C. Durant, the automobile manufacturer, 

 produced a light gasoline-powered machine weighing only three 

 hundred pounds which employed a set of rotary blades, as well as suc- 

 tion, in the picker-heads. His firm in St. Louis built some 500 of these 

 machines, but was unable to dispose of them in this country and in 

 time sold most of them to the Soviet Government, which during the 

 thirties displayed an active interest in mechanical cotton harvesting. 



Some experimenters sought an electrical solution. As early as 1868 

 a Brooklyn inventor patented a device to detach the fiber from the boll 

 by electrical attraction and to convey it, by means of a statically 



s Smith, H. P., et al., The mechanical harvesting of cotton, Texas Agr. Exp. 

 Stat. Bull. 452, August 1932, contains illustrations of many of the early devices 

 and a list of patents granted on all types of cotton-harvesting equipment from 

 1850 to 1932. 



'An improved cotton picker, Sci. Amer., vol. 67, p. 291, November 5, 1892; 

 Dale, William, A machine for picking cotton, Sci. Amer., vol. 94, pp. 371-372, 

 May 5, 1906 ; Cotton picking by suction, Lit. Dig., vol. 78, p. 29, August 4, 1923. 



7 New mechanical cotton picker, Lit. Dig., vol. 103, p. 32, November 16, 1929; 

 Straus, Robert K., Enter the cotton picker, Harper's, vol. 173, p. 389, September 

 1936 ; McHugh, F. D., Machines pick cotton, but — , Sci. Amer., vol. 159, pp. 242- 

 245, November 1938. 



