A bullwheel is a large wheel on which a rope

Rope

A rope is a length of fibres, twisted or braided together to improve strength for pulling and connecting. It has tensile strength but is too flexible to provide compressive strength...

 turns, such as in a chairlift

Chairlift

An elevated passenger ropeway, or chairlift, is a type of aerial lift, which consists of a continuously circulating steel cable loop strung between two end terminals and usually over intermediate towers, carrying a series of chairs...

. In that application, the bullwheel that is attached to the prime mover is called the drive bullwheel, with the other known as the return bullwheel.

Originally, bullwheel was an oil field

Oil field

An oil field is a region with an abundance of oil wells extracting petroleum from below ground. Because the oil reservoirs typically extend over a large area, possibly several hundred kilometres across, full exploitation entails multiple wells scattered across the area...

 term applied to the large wheel that turns the drum upon which the drilling line is wound in percussion drilling.

The bullwheel (or bull wheel) began use in farm implements with the reaper

Reaper

A reaper is a person or machine that reaps crops at harvest, when they are ripe.-Hand reaping:Hand reaping is done by various means, including plucking the ears of grains directly by hand, cutting the grain stalks with a sickle, cutting them with a scythe, or with a later type of scythe called a...

. The term was commonly used to describe the traveling wheel, traction wheel, drive wheel, or harvester wheel. The bullwheel powered all the moving parts of these farm machines including the reciprocating knives, reel, rake, and self binder. The bull wheel's outer surface provided traction against the ground and turned when the draft animals or tractor

Tractor

A tractor is a vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery used in agriculture or construction...

 pulled the implement forward. Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus McCormick

Cyrus Hall McCormick, Sr. was an American inventor and founder of the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company, which became part of International Harvester Company in 1902.He and many members of the McCormick family became prominent Chicagoans....

 used the bullwheel to power his 1834 reaper and up until the early 1920s when small internal combustion engine

Internal combustion engine

The internal combustion engine is an engine in which the combustion of a fuel occurs with an oxidizer in a combustion chamber. In an internal combustion engine, the expansion of the high-temperature and high -pressure gases produced by combustion apply direct force to some component of the engine...

 gasoline engines like the Cushman Motor

Cushman

Cushman is a manufacturer of industrial vehicles, personal vehicles, and other custom vehicles, including parking patrol auto rickshaws.- Models :* Haulster, small industrial multi-purpose truck.* Truckster* Bellhop Series, golf carts....

began to be favored.