Time Frame

• When Whitney finished his college education at Yale University in 1792, the Industrial Revolution was in high gear. The discovery of new sources of power, mechanical inventions and engineering triumphs were hallmarks of this period. Enterprising, creative people applied this knowledge to reshape and improve many business and industrial processes.
  
  

History

• Whitney accepted a teaching position in South Carolina because he could not find a suitable job upon graduation from Yale. A widowed plantation owner, Mrs. Catherine Greene, approached Whitney and asked him to help her improve the profit from her annual cotton crop. At that time, it took an average of one day for a slave worker to clean 1 pound of cotton. To solve her problem, Whitney needed to create a machine that could separate cotton seeds from the boll much faster than a human worker could.
  
  

Significance

• According to the Eli Whitney Museum, Whitney developed a hand-cranked cotton gin that could process up to 10 pounds of cotton a day. When he modified it to use a horse to power the cranking mechanism, the daily processing output increased to 50 pounds a day. Southern plantation owners increased the amount of acreage that they dedicated to cotton production because Whitney's invention made the crop far more profitable than it had been previously. Soon after Whitney invented his cotton gin, the United States became the largest producer and exporter of cotton.
  
  

Theories/Speculation

• Notable historians, including the Eli Whitney Museum and Yale University, speculate that the cotton gin helped prolong slavery in the United States. After Whitney obtained his patent for the cotton gin, numerous enterprising entrepreneurs manufactured look-alike and similar gins. While Whitney was defending his patent in court, U.S. cotton production increased significantly, spurring the need for additional slaves. Although Congress had banned importation of slaves in 1808, the 1860 census counted nearly 4 million slaves, a sharp increase from the 1800 count of fewer than 1 million.
  
  

Misconceptions

• History shows that Whitney did not invent the first cotton gin. However, he was the first person to obtain a patent for one in the United States. Even with improvements, Whitney was unable to benefit financially from his invention. After trying to find funding for manufacturing the gins for several years, Whitney eventually abandoned his development of the cotton gin and went home to Connecticut. There, he turned his attention to manufacturing the first gun with interchangeable parts. In 1798, he landed a large contract with the federal government that once again put him on the map of historical inventions. However, this invention resulted in financial gain as well.