Cotton Gin

Eli Whitney headed south from his native Massachusetts to assume the position of a private tutor on a plantation in Georgia after graduating from Yale. He quickly learned that the Southern planters were in need of a way to make a profit off of cotton. The cotton gin was invented in 1793 by Whitney in order to speed up the process of removing seeds from raw cotton so it could be cleaned. His model consisted of a wooden cylinder surrounded by rows of small spikes which pull the cotton through a comb-like grid. He designed the grids close together in order to stop the seeds from passing through. In 1790, the American production of cotton was 1.5 million pounds. 20 years later in 1810, that amount shot up to 85 million pounds. By mid century, America was growing three-quarters of the world's cotton supply, shipping it to England where it was manufactured into cloth.

Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin