Cotton gin patent, March 14, 1794

A cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum.

An engraving from Harper's Magazine from 1869 depicting the first cotton gin more than 70 years earlier

Origins

The gin method for seeding cotton can be traced back as far as the first century C.E. The earliest versions consisted of a single roller made of iron or wood and a flat piece of stone or wood. Evidence for this type of gin has been found in Africa, Asia, and North America. The first documentation of the cotton gin by contemporary scholars is found in the fifth century C.E. Visual evidence of the single-roller gin exists in the form of fifth-century Buddhist paintings in the Ajanta Caves in western India. These early gins were difficult to use and required a great deal of skill. A narrow single roller was necessary to expel the seeds from the cotton without crushing the seeds. The design was similar to that of a metate, which was used to grind grain. The earliest history of the cotton gin is ambiguous due to the fact that archeologists likely mistook the cotton gin's parts for other tools.^[1]

Between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries, dual roller gins appeared in India and China. The Indian version of the two roller gin was prevalent throughout the Mediterranean cotton trade by the sixteenth century. This mechanical device was, in some areas, driven by water power.^[2]

The modern cotton gin was created by the American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 to mechanize the cleaning of cotton. The invention was granted a patent on March 14, 1794.

There is slight controversy over whether the idea of the cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Eli Whitney. The popular version of Whitney inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on the subject in the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in the The Library of Southern Literature. In this article the author mentioned how Catherine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental to separate out the seeds and cotton. Historians later explored this idea, and some consider that Catherine Littlefield Greene, Whitney's landlady, should be credited with the invention of the cotton gin, or at least with the original concept. Women were not eligible to receive patents in the early U.S., and Greene may have asked Whitney to obtain it for her. Robert Watkins, who resided near Petersburg, Georgia is credited by many historians as the first inventor of the cotton gin, and was using it on his plantation when he was visited by the frustrated Whitney who on seeing it went back to Savannah and soon developed his model which he patented. Watkins was urged to sue Whitney, but had no desire to engage in a controversy and never asserted his claim. Watkins was a planter of large means, who pursued the study and application of mechanics more for amusement than profit.

While the Watkins story had some romantic adherents, and still others have credited Hodgson Holmes, later publication of certain of Whitney's papers, including letters to his family during the invention process, showed the claims to be lacking foundation.

Many people attempted to develop a design that would process short staple cotton and Holmes was indeed issued a patent for an "Improvement in the Cotton Gin". However, the evidence indicates that Whitney did invent the saw gin, for which he is famous. Although he spent many years in court attempting to enforce his patent against planters who made unauthorized copies, a change in patent law ultimately made his claim legally enforceable?too late for him to make much money off of the device in the single year remaining before patent expiration.^[3]

Effects of the Cotton Gin

The immediate effect of the Gin was to cause a massive growth in the production of cotton in the American South. Whereas cotton had formerly required considerable labor to clean and separate the fiber from the seeds, the cotton gin revolutionized the process. The wholesale price of cotton plummeted as output increased dramatically. Cotton cloth (which had formerly been quite expensive) was manufactured in bulk in England and the NE United States. Large areas of land on American states such as Mississippi were cleared and planted with cotton to meet increasing demand. An unfortunate by-product of the cotton gin was the expansion of slavery through the region, as laborers were needed to plant and harvest cotton -- not the most pleasant of tasks in the Southern heat. Many of the plantations of the Antebellum South were built on cotton fortunes, which could not have occurred without the cotton gin's invention.

How Whitney's model works

Whitney's cotton gin model cleans 50 pounds of lint a day^[4]. The model consists of a wooden cylinder surrounded by rows of slender spikes which pulls the lint through the bars of a comb-like grid ^[4]. The grids are closely spaced, prohibiting the seeds to pass through.

Notes

References

• Baber, Zaheer. The Science of Empire: Scientific Knowledge, Civilization, and Colonial Rule in India. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996. ISBN 0791429199.
• Lakwete, Angela. Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

External links

• Cotton Gin Certification - A gin's role in fiber quality
• Overview of a Cotton Gin - USDA site
• The Story of Cotton - National Cotton Council of America site
• National Cotton Ginners Association
• Cotton Gin Manufacturer - Lummus Corporation Web site
• US Cotton Gin Industry (EH.Net Encyclopedia of Economic History)
• Invention of Cotton Gin - eHistory.com

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