Cotton gin
From Free net encyclopedia
Image:Cotton-gin.jpg The cotton gin is a machine invented by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 to mechanize the production of cotton fiber. The machine quickly and easily separates the cotton fibers from the seedpods and the sometimes sticky seeds. It uses a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through the screen, while brushes continuously remove the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. The invention was granted a patent on March 14, 1794. The cotton gin was a large asset to the American economy. The term "gin" is an abbreviation for engine, and means "device," and is not related to the alcoholic beverage gin.
The traditional account of Whitney's inspiration for the cotton gin involves seeing a cat clawing a chicken through the slatted walls of its coop and retrieving a paw full of feathers.
There is some controversy over whether the idea of the cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Whitney. Some consider that Catherine Littlefield Greene, Whitney's employer, should be credited with the invention of the cotton gin, or at least with the original concept. What is known is that Greene gave Whitney moral and financial support, and that women were not eligible to receive patents in the early U.S. Contributing to the controversy, patent office records also indicate that the first cotton gin may have been built by a machinist named Noah Homes two years before Whitney’s patent was filed.
Small cotton gins were hand-powered; larger ones were harnessed to horses or water wheels.
The cotton gin revolutionized the cotton-growing industry because it increased fiftyfold the quantity of cotton that could be processed in a day. This made the widespread cultivation of cotton lucrative in the American South, and is therefore often considered to have greatly facilitated increased demand for slave labor. This increase in slave labor ultimately led to the start of the Civil War and the end of slavery itself in the United States.
After emancipation there were few job opportunities for freed slaves and many continued working the cotton fields for their previous owners for very little wages, or became sharecroppers that grew cotton on shares with their landlord.
Cotton ginning is now synonymous with the entire process that occurs in the gin plant. Other machines are employed to remove trash and package the raw cotton into bales for shipment to textile mills. The actual ginning process occurs in a gin stand.
External links
- Overview of a Cotton Gin - USDA site
- The Story of Cotton - National Cotton Council of America site
- National Cotton Ginners Association