NCpedia | NCpedia | Eli Whitney Patents His Cotton Gin

à 16 avril

Eli Whitney's cotton gin, invented in 1793, is rightfully one of the most famous inventions of the Industrial Revolution. It separates the lint of the cotton plant, which thread and ultimately cloth is made of, from the sticky seeds—a process that, done by hand, is the definition of "tedious".Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1793. Suddenly we could turn a profit on this terribly labor-intensive crop. Sam's father had solved the critical problem of removing seeds from cotton by developing a kind of comb to do the job. Whitney's cotton gin simply mechanized this comb.The cotton gin is a device that separates cotton seeds from cotton fiber, making the production of cotton easier and cheaper. Although Whitney believed his new invention would help to solve a problem, what he did not envision was the problems that it would eventually cause.Eli Whitney was an American inventor who created the cotton gin and pushed the "interchangeable parts" mode of production. Eli Whitney studied at Yale before going on to invent the cotton gin, a device that highly streamlined the process of extracting fiber from cotton seeds.Whitney's gin made cotton production profitable for Georgia and the rest of the Southeast, there were many problems with the machine's cotton gin's invention served as the first test of the newly created U.S. patent system. Most evidence indicates, however, that Whitney did invent the saw gin.

Black American inventors before the Civil War

Eli Whitney. Cotton Gin. Whilst many people believe it was Eli Whitney who invented the cotton gin, the real brains behind it was a woman called Catherine Littlefield Greene.She developed the blueprints and got Eli to make it (at the time he was the tutor of Catherine's neighbours children) and...Eli Witney's Cotton Gin used by African Americans slaves. On December 8 , 1765 , American inventor Eli Whitney was born. Whitney is best known for inventing the cotton gin . This was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of the Antebellum South.Background Eli Whitney and the Need for an Invention As Eli Whitney left New England and Whitney was encouraged to find a solution to this problem by his employer, Catherine Greene Eli Whitney Patents His Cotton Gin. In hopes of making a patentable machine, Whitney put aside his...Eli Whitney's cotton gin resolved separating the seeds from the cotton. Explanation This was developed by Eli Whitney in 1793. This small machine allowed this separation at high speed and economically, being able to supply the growing demand for raw cotton after the invention of the loom.

Invention of the Cotton Gin by Eli Whitney | What is a Cotton Gin?

Eli Whitney's cotton gin soon changed that, it allows slaves to be much more productive. The cotton gin did not only change the output of cotton in In a letter to his father he said "Could be invented which would clean the cotton with expedition, it would be a great thing both for the country and to the...Eli Whitney was an American inventor and manufacturer best known for inventing the cotton gin. Learn more about his life, inventions, and legacy. Rather than selling the gins, Whitney and his business partner Phineas Miller planned to profit by charging growers to clean their cotton with them.Solving the Wrong Problem. Reportedly, Whitney found inspiration in a very strange way. The gin made cotton profitable which was a boon to the south, but did manage to keep slavery going for so the cotton gin was in fact invented by a cat. curse you propaganda mill posing as elementary school!When Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin he couldn't even imagine his invention would bring so much Based on what the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney in 1794 did, removing seeds from the cotton Many of the racially charged social problems we experience today might have been avoided.Whitney's invention of the cotton gin enabled one man to clean as much cotton in one day as could be cleaned in an Ironically, the cotton gin did much more than make cotton growing a profitable venture for the southern states. Part of the problem was that the device was too easily copied.

If you went to elementary school in the United States, you no doubt learned about Eli Whitney's cotton gin as an example of how the industrial revolution took previously manual processes and replaced the low-efficiency of human labor with machines. The development of the cotton gin — patented in 1794 — involves an interesting lesson about solving engineering problems.

Farmers in the southern United States had a big problem. Tobacco was a cash crop, but it eventually left your fields barren and how to solve that problem wasn't understood yet. Indigo was valuable for dye, but the British were eating away that market with indigo created in its colonies. Rice requires a lot of water and swamp, so it was only suitable for certain areas.

There was one thing that grew very readily in much of the land: cotton. Unfortunately, the cotton had little seeds you had to remove. A single person could clean — maybe — a pound of cotton a day. In the late 1700s, plantation owner Catharine Littlefield Greene introduced Whitney to a group of farmers were trying to decide if there was a way to make cotton a more profitable crop.

Solving the Wrong Problem

Reportedly, Whitney found inspiration in a very strange way. He couldn't figure out how to remove the little entrenched seeds from the cotton. But one day he saw a cat trying to pull a chicken through a fence. The cat was unsuccessful but managed to get some feathers. That was the key: Don't try to remove the seeds from the cotton, but remove the cotton from the seeds.

The gin — short for engine — had tiny hooks that would pull cotton fibers or lint through a mesh. The seeds couldn't make it through. By changing the machine from one that removes seeds to one that removes cotton, the design was very simple.

An 1883 article in the North American Review claimed that Mrs. Greene had made some suggestions about the design of the machine. However, the author didn't provide any source for the claim and it remains unproven. It wouldn't be surprising, though. Greene certainly provided financial support as well as encouragement.

Greene's plantation manager, Phineas Miller, became Whitney's business partner. Whitney, Miller, and Greene did not intend to sell the gin, instead planning a model where they would own all the machines and take a percentage of the clean cotton as a fee. Cotton as a service, if you will. The gin could do about 55 pounds a day, so one simple machine and one or two people could do the work of at least 55 people.

Aftermath

The gin made cotton profitable which was a boon to the south, but did manage to keep slavery going for another seven decades — that wasn't Witney's intent, of course. The service model failed because the device was simple enough, that people copied it — illegally, in light of the new patent laws. In the end, he didn't make the money he hoped for, although he did make some and became famous for his labor-saving invention. He would go on to pioneer the use of interchangeable parts in manufacturing, but that's an entirely different story.

How many times are we faced with a problem that we can't quite solve? It is worth taking a page from Whitney's book and asking yourself how to flip the problem around to see if that helps. We are just glad the gin shorthand didn't catch on as we'd hate to have to say we work as gingineers.

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[Patent drawing via the National Archives]