Cotton gin

A model of a 19th-century cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut

A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"[1][2]—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.[3] The separated seeds may be used to grow more cotton or to produce cottonseed oil.

Handheld roller gins had been used in the Indian subcontinent since at earliest AD 500 and then in other regions.[4] The Indian worm-gear roller gin was invented sometime around the 16th century[5] and has, according to Lakwete, remained virtually unchanged up to the present time. A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794.

Whitney's gin used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams. It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also inadvertently led to the growth of slavery in the American South. Whitney's gin made cotton farming more profitable[citation needed] and efficient so plantation owners expanded their plantations and used more of their slaves to pick cotton. Whitney never invented the machine to harvest cotton: it still had to be picked by hand. The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War.[6] Modern automated cotton gins use multiple powered cleaning cylinders and saws, and offer far higher productivity than their hand-powered precursors.[7]

  1. ^ "Cotton Gins". New Georgia Encyclopedia.
  2. ^ "Definition of GIN". Merriam-webster.com.
  3. ^ Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, LCCN 16011753. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-24075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois, (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference LakGin was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Habib, Irfan (February 3, 2018). Economic History of Medieval India, 1200-1500. Pearson Education India. ISBN 9788131727911 – via Google Books.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference WarCause was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ inventors.about.com; "Background on the Cotton Gin", retrieved October 22, 2010.