Early American Inventions

As a young kid he loved to visit his father's workshop and take apart old clocks and little machines then put them back together. As he would sometimes watch the slaves, he noticed how hard it was to get all of the seeds out of cotton. He then, in 1792 graduated from Yale College. In just a short year after he graduated, in his spare time he invented the cotton gin. In the student reading, Cotton Gin, by Maureen Romero, it explains, “The cotton gin was a very simple invention. First, the cotton bolls were put into the top of the machine. Next, you turn the handle, which turns the cotton through the wire teeth that combs out the seeds. Then the cotton is pulled out of the wire teeth and out of the cotton gin.” What may sound like just a little invention with no impact is actually a little machine with one huge impact. Since cotton was now so much easier to get rid of the seeds, everyone started planting cotton and farmers planted even more cotton. Previously, no one planted cotton, because it took so long to pick out all of the seeds. Cotton was not the cash crop. Now it only takes two seconds to get all of the seeds out. Another plus on growing cotton, is it can grow anywhere even in land where all of the nutrients are dried out of the ground. This is what made it rise to the number one cash crop.

During the industrial revolution, Eli Whitney’ development of the cotton gin in the year of 1794, was an extremely popular and widely used invention throughout the United States of America. This particular machine, is capable of completely separating the seeds, from what we know as cotton. Prior to Whitney’s generous contribution, manual physical employment was necessary for this job. The cotton gin allowed quicker expansion of cotton, which quickly lead to an increase in the economy in the South. The fact that slaves were used to produce such cotton was one of the main causes for tension between the North and the South. The opposite sides had opposite views and opinions on

Life before the cotton gin was very strange, unpredictable, and production of cotton was very sluggish. In the 1800s, before the cotton gin, slaves had to pick seeds out of the cotton fiber by hand. Production was so slow southerners began to give slaves breaks until the cotton gin was invented. (Cotton). “The seeds could only be removed by hand, which proved slow and inefficient, Whitney once remarked to a friend that he had never met anyone able to clean more than one pound a day.” (Elizabeth). During this time the only way was by hand, it took slaves days just to get a pound or two.

In 1794, U.S. inventor Eli Whitney patented a machine that transformed the production of cotton by significantly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber called the cotton gin. By the middle of the 19th century cotton had become America’s leading export. This gave Sothern’s the rationalization to maintain and expand slavery despite large number of abolitionists in America. While the cotton gin made cotton processing easier, it facilitated planters in earning greater profits, resulting in larger cotton crops. This in turn increased slavery because it was the cheapest form of labor. As for the North, particularly New England, the cotton gin and cotton’s increase meant a steady supply of raw materials for its textile mills.

In addition to the plentiful raw materials that England supplied, Britain had an expanding economy to support their industrialization. With the help of Britain's stable government and new investors, factories were able to quickly adapt to newly purchased machinery. The Industrial Revolution was further spurred by a resolution of new technology. These new inventions and expansion of factories led to a rapid increase in wealth of the overall nation. Which led the decrease in prices to come from the introduction of machines. For example, the creation of the well known cotton gin, by Eli Whitney helped revolutionized the production of cotton. Before, the cotton process took a long period of time and extensive work to produce a widely traded product. Whitney’s new tecnhioldingal invention was able to show tremendous growth in efficiency. This machine helped by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. By the mid-19th century, cotton had became America’s leading export. In other words, this machine was designed to spin and weave the fabric, which helped to expand the Industrial Revolution’s productivity. This picture displays the sketches made to depict the parts of the original cotton gin. These gins were an important invention because it dramatically reduced the amount of time it took to separate cotton seeds from cotton fiber. This was one of the key

With its warm climate and fertile soil, the South became an agrarian society, where tobacco, rice, sugar, cotton, wheat, and hemp defined the economy (“Colonial Economy”). Because of a labor shortage, landowners bought African slaves to work their massive plantations. Even small-scale farmers often used slave labor as a means to help increase their production rate ("John C. Calhoun's Defense of Slavery"). After the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney, cotton could finally be mass produced (“Slavery”). However, in order to pick all the cotton, slave labor would be needed, thus the reason for hundreds of thousands of imported slaves during the 1700s. In the United States, a stronger case can be made that slavery played a critical role in economic development. Cotton, grown primarily with slave labor, provided over half of all US export earnings. By 1840, the South grew sixty percent of the world's cotton and provided about seventy percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. (“Colonial Economy”). In addition, due to the South specializing in cotton production, the North developed a variety of businesses that provided services for the slave South, including textile factories, a meat processing industry, insurance companies, shippers, and cotton brokers (“Colonial Economy”). By the time the Civil War erupted, 4.9

In 1793 the cotton industry bloomed because of Eli Whitney when he invented the cotton gin. With the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable industry, creating many fortunes for white plantation owners in the antebellum South. “American inventor Eli Whitney and his cotton gin improved the cleaning of raw cotton, facilitating the continuing growth of the industry in many locales.” This proves that the cotton industry rose after the gin was invented. It is evident that Eli Whitney played a major part of the growth of the cotton industry. Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the cotton industry.

Due to this, the economy of America at this period of time was centred around cotton and as Clement Eaton stated, 'After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, the tempo of life in the South quickened.' The industry was able to achieve large profits through the use of slaves-the cheapest labour of all-and eventually 'Three-fourths of the world's supply of cotton came from the southern states.'

The cotton gin was a simple machine which de-seeded cotton. Eli Whitney created this cotton gin in 1793 when he was in Georgia. When living on a plantation in Georgia, he heard some visitors complaining about how cotton was a nice crop to have but took too long to seperate from the seeds (Patchett, 17). The visitors were told about how Eli was a good mechanic and saw some of what Eli had made. The visitors at the plantation went to Eli asking him to make something to help with this cotton problem. At first Eli was reluctant to make anything for the men because he, as he said, “had no extraordinary mechanical skills”(Patchett,18). Secondly, he said he knew nothing of cotton for he had never seen cotton or cotton seeds. Then Whitney changed his mind knowing he couldn’t resist the challenge and began a search for cotton. Once he found some cotton it only took Eli a few days to have a machine in mind (Patchett, 19).

With the economic system, the south had a very hard time producing their main source “cotton and tobacco”. “Cotton became commercially significant in the 1790’s after the invention of a new cotton gin by Eli Whitney. (PG 314)” Let

The Transcontinental Railroad was one of the most ambitious engineering projects, economic stimulants, and efficient methods of transportation in the early United States. If completed, the United States would be truly be united from east to west. The purpose of this paper is to examine how the Transcontinental Railroad helped develop new opportunities for many aspects of American life.

The South’s first experience with exporting wasn’t a good one, in fact it was horrible. One bale of cotton was sent to England and that one bale of cotton rotted on its way across the Atlantic. At that time all of America’s cotton was grown on a total of two hundred acres on the Sea Islands just off the coast of South Carolina and Georgia, however this was just the beginning. The only downside of growing cotton was the intense labor it demanded. The most tedious work with the cotton was the picking out of seeds, eventually Eli Whitney’s cotton gin would make this a much faster process and lowering the price of cotton as well. The cotton industry took off after the invention of the cotton gin, there was a much higher demand for cotton especially in

The economic elements played an important role during the time period 1800-1824. Technological innovation greatly contributed towards the economic elements with improved firearms production, steam engines, and the invention of the cotton gin. The cotton gin, created by Eli Whitney, easily removed the seeds that adhered tenaciously to the cotton. The average adult slave by himself could only clean up to a pound of cotton a day, while with the help of the cotton gin a single slave could clean up to 50 pounds a day. Without the cotton gin, the South could only produce 3,000 bales of cotton, but after the invention the production sky rocketed to 178,000 bales of cotton, and again almost doubled to 334,000 bales after the War of 1812. Whitney’s

     Eli Whitney's machine was the first to clean short-staple cotton. His cotton engine was made of spiked teeth that were on a revolving cylinder which when turned by a crank, pulled the cotton fiber through small openings to separate the seeds from the lint.                                    L-ter on, the gins became horse-drawn and were powered by water. As a result, the cotton was being produced at a much faster pace. The price of cotton also decreased. Cotton soon became the number one selling good.

With Eli Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became very profitable. This machine was able to reduce the time it took to separate seeds from the cotton. However, at the same time the increase in the number of plantations willing to move from other crops to cotton meant the greater need for a large amount of cheap labor, i.e. slaves. Thus, the southern economy became a one crop economy, depending on cotton and therefore on slavery. On the other hand, the northern economy was based more on industry than agriculture. In fact, the northern industries were purchasing the raw cotton and turning it into finished goods. This disparity between the two set up a