Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin

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

with Greene, Whitney learned a lot about the production of cotton. He learned it was a

The cotton gin, invented by Eli Whitney, was a mechanized way to remove to sticky green seeds from the fluffy white cotton balls. (Eli Whitney Museum) The hand powered cotton gin was a huge advancement, but the larger versions of the cotton gin which were pulled by a horse, could produce much more. According to Whitney, "One man and a horse will do more than fifty men with

By 1790 slavery was on the decline in America. Apart from tobacco, rice, and a special strain of cotton that could be grown only in very few places, the South really had no money crop to export. Tobacco was a land waster, depleting the soil within very few years. Land was so cheap that tobacco planters never bothered to reclaim the soil by crop rotation -- they simply found new land farther west. The other crops -- rice, indigo, corn, and some wheat -- made for no great wealth. Slaves cost something, not only to buy but to maintain, and some Southern planters thought that conditions had reached a point where a slave's labor no longer paid for his care. Eli Whitney came to the south in 1793, conveniently enough, during the time when

In the 1790’s the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney sparked an increase in cotton production in the South. The cotton gin decreased the labor time it took to pick seeds from the cotton. Slave owners moved or sold their slaves to deep Southern states

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.

4. One very crucial machine shaped life in the South. Separating the seeds from a cotton was a slow process and planters needed a better way to clean cotton. To solve the planters’ problem, a young Connecticut school teacher, Eli Whitney, invented a machine that had two rollers with thin wire teeth, which would separate the seeds from the fibers when cotton was swept between the rollers. This gave workers an advantage from other workers. For example, a person using a

Eli Whitney was born in Massachusetts. After his successful high school career, he attended Yale college with intentions to become a lawyer. However, he decided that he wanted something more. He pursued something more mechanical knowing that he would

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).

The invention of the cotton gin changed one day's work of seeding into one hour. This innovation meant that cotton could be separated easier and quicker. Eli Whitney’s idea of the cotton gin was that it could be hand cranked by a person, powered by horses or water. Whitney quoted in the article Teaching With Documents: Eli Whitney’s Patent for the Cotton Gin, in a letter to his father, “One man and a horse will do more than fifty

Eli Whitney denied his job for torturing, after learning that his salary would be cut in half. He decided to accept Catherine Greene's offer to read law at her Mulberry Grove plantation. Later on, Catherine noticed that her profit was declining because of the tobacco market's downfall. Eli Whitney with the support of Catherine Greene proposed a plan for a machine that will give them more profit for cotton. The machine was called cotton gin, it's purpose was to increase the production of cotton greatly by removing seeds from cotton fiber. There were able to make the cotton gin in 1793.

Although Whitney acknowledged the difficulty, he didn’t want the valuable commodity,cotton, to disappear. With this in mind, Eli Whitney constructed an invention, the Cotton Gin, that took away all the laboriousness and hardship of producing cotton in time. According to an article, Growth and Entrenchment of Slavery, it said, “With the gin (short for engine), raw cotton could be quickly cleaned; Suddenly cotton became a profitable crop, transforming the southern economy and changing the dynamics of slavery.” The creation of the Cotton Gin created a huge innovation for the southern states. The Cotton Gin was able to produce the result the people needed and cotton was able to be yield easier. In order to make the Cotton Gin harvest large amounts of cotton faster and easier, Whitney conceptualized ideas to improve the existing Cotton Gin. By this time, the northern states were more concentrated toward industrial due to the non-fertile soil found there. According to an article, the Growth of the Cotton Industry, it said, “Additionally, the development of large-scale mills and metal machine tools dramatically increased textile production in Northern mill towns in the early 1800s.” This quote shows the effect of the Cotton Gin on the northern states. To sum up my points, the Cotton Gin will continue to thrive due to benefit it brought to the people in northern and southern

In 1793 Eli Whitney revolutionized America’s South with his invention of the cotton gin machine. This machine separated the cotton rapidly, without the need of having slaves take out individual cotton that took a lifetime thus causing many injuries. The cotton gin was such a big success that it

Eli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the mass production of cotton. Whitney was born in Westboro , Massachusetts., on Dec. 8, 1765, and died on Jan. 8, 1825. He graduated from Yale College in 1792. By April 1793, Whitney had designed and constructed the cotton gin, a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber.

     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.