Excerpt from Cottonseed Handling at Gins: Production Research Report No. 66 Although cotton has been grown for its fiber for many centuries, the seed has been generally used commercially only in relatively recent times. It is reported that in ancient times the Hindus and the Chinese, using the principle of the mortar and the pestle, developed crude methods for obtaining oil from cottonseed. They used the oil for their lamps and fed the remainder of the pressed seed to their cattle. For many centuries, however, the use of cottonseed in India and China never developed much beyond that primitive stage. The first cottonseed oil known to have been produced in America was exhibited before the American Philosophical Society in 1768. It was produced on a very small, experimental scale and was generally regarded as a curiosity. Little effort appears to have been made to produce additional oil until after the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The increase in cotton production that followed this invention made the use of cottonseed a challenge. During the first part of the 19th century, mills in Europe began to crush Egyptian cottonseed on a limited scale. However, American chemists were primarily responsible for transforming cottonseed into useful products. Before the crushing industry was developed, cottonseed had no cash value except the limited quantities sold for planting-seed. Small quantities of seed were used for fertilizer and some was fed to livestock. Raw cottonseed, however, has limited value as livestock feed. Most seed was left at the gins. Disposal was a serious problem; some States passed laws prohibiting gins from accumulating large quanti t1es on their premises and from dumping seed into streams. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.