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The cotton gin industry
African Americans in the 19th century America
The cotton gin industry
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Technology has fueled inventions by the need for efficiency in producing a product, making everyday living easier, saving lives and improving health conditions to live longer. African American inventors in a times of slavery and segregation created inventions carried throughout the decades. In the late seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth century African-Americans had to work on their inventions and skills against social barriers because of societal beliefs and the value of a person based not on what a person invention or skills has to offer mankind, but the color of a person’s skin. Inventors such as Eli Whitney, Jan Earnst Matzeliger, Garrett Augustus Morgan, James Derham and Mary Elizabeth Mahoney are all pioneers under societal oppression …show more content…
During the early 17th century European used African-American as indentured slaves to work on plantations and farm land denied basic education, laws prohibited slaves from learning how to read and write. In fear of rebelling against the slave owners. After the American Revolution 1775-1783, the U.S. Constitution recognized each slave as three-fifths of a person, mainly for the slave owner’s taxation. The northern states abolished slavery between 1774 and 1804 but in the southern states still continued slavery. Which has confined African-Americans to working in domestic services, manual trades and agriculture. Nevertheless a few African-Americans were able to get an education and made significant contributions to society and inspire others to take their ideas and inventions public. Late 18th century the tobacco fields weakened to produce crops around the same time the textile industry in England had a big demand for cotton. The cotton demand was hastened by separating the seeds from the cotton by …show more content…
It would take a cotton picker one day to pick the seeds out of one pound of cotton, considering cotton is a very light product that was a lot of cotton to go thought in one day. Soon after Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1794, the cotton ran through a strainer, a series of hooks dragging the cotton over a mesh removing the seeds from the fibers. The smaller cotton gin could be cranked by hand removing seeds from 50 pounds in one day and the larger cotton gin powered by horse and later by steam made cotton production more efficient. Eli Whitney and Phineas Miller plantation manager of Mulberry Grove formed a cotton gin manufacturing company, they built and installed cotton gins all over the south. Whitney and Miller made a deal with farmers, a percentage of the cotton profits in return for the cotton gin machine. Instead, the farmers took the design and constructed their own machines. Although Whitney had a patent the laws had many loopholes to bypass the Whitney’s patent. Later Whitney’s patent expired. The cotton gin machine transformed the way cotton could be processed more efficiently and quickly by the end of the 19th century, cotton was the leading expert in
African American Contributions in Science Throughout American history, many African Americans have been overlooked in the field of science. Some powerful minds and great inventors haven’t been re-introduced to new generations. African Americans have contributed a great deal to the advancements of our country and one of the major fields they have made contributions to is in the field of science. Many successful African Americans have been overshadowed by their Caucasian counterparts.
That was the beginning of Eli and I being partners. We got to work on creating a machine to help this problem. But this machine did much more than separate cotton seeds form cotton fiber. The machine changed history in a very big way. When we thought of names and finally we came up with the "Cotton Gin". You may think that the machine would decline slavery because
The cotton gin was invented in 1793 by Eli Whitney while he was in Georgia working as a tutor for Catherine Greene. After looking at the slaves working tiresomely trying to remov...
Back in the seventeen and eighteen hundredths, cotton was America’s greatest exports. “the southern states were producing two thirds of the world's cotton.”(Ciment 6) It was an ideal crop that could easily be grown. “His cotton gin enabled a laborer to separate a lot of cotton from the seeds with little effort. A laborer working by hand could once expect to produce only one pound of cleaned cotton per day. With the help of a cotton gin, fifty pounds could be cleaned in a day.” (Benson 399, 400) After the invention of the cotton gin, the profit of cotton has double every year. The affects of the cotton gin gave America the opportunity to grow three-quarters of the world’s supply of cotton. This led America to enter a “cotton boom” era. “By 1800, seven years after Whitney’s invention, cotton production in the United States had increased 2300 % and continued to increase rather steadily… until production controls were imposed during the 1930s.” (Smith 8)
Before the advent of Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, plantations in the Antebellum South experimented with several crops in attempt to gain wealth, but nothing seemed to work. The climate was too hot for tobacco, yet not hot enough for sugar cane (Huff 36). Both long-staple and short- staple cotton were experimented, but were found unable to be prof...
First, cotton manufacturing increased tremendously. The initial invention was the flying shuttle. In the 1730's it was created to increase the amount of clothe produced, by weaving cotton at a faster pace. Then James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny in 1765, which consisted of a series of machines that simultaneously spun sixteen threads of cotton. This sped up the amount of time that it took to produce cotton fabric, and took the place of several laborers work. Richard Arkwright soon realized that power-operated machines could be created, where unskilled workers could operate them. He did this by using warm water from the ground to rotate a five-story wheel, which provided...
Cotton is not just a universal crop, but it has a universal name, according to the source, Natural History and Commercial History of Cotton by the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce the chief title of cotton is gossypium. The source explains that this genus belongs to the monadelphous class of Linnaeus, and to the usual order of Malvaceous plants. Cotton has very distinct characteristics, “It is characterized by the three long deeply cut segments into which its outer calyx is divided ; by its large, handsome blossoms of five petals, of a yellow, orange, or reddish colour, with or without a central spot of a deeper tint…”(Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce 139). Cotton has copious stamens which are amalgamated in several different ways, some include the base of the stamen, or by single style which include three- five stigmas, or by its seeds which have several contained in each one.
In the 1700’s Agriculture was very simple, but was a very long process of production. Most things were done by hand in the 1700’s. A man by the name of Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and this invention would clean cotton much faster than the average man. This machine helped decrease the amount of slaves because the farmers would only have to have enough slaves to run the cotton through the machine (Moore). In March of 1794 the cotton gin was patented (Smith). At the start of the civil war 80% of the cotton was grown in the south on the southern plantations (Moore).
After the War of 1812, the relation between cotton and slaves was the reason for the spread of the plantation system to the west. Cotton production, “exploded from 73,000 bales in 1800 to more than 2 million bales by mid-century, thanks to fertility of virgin land and to technological changes, such as improved seed varieties and steam-powered cotton gins,” (Goldfield et.
In today's world, technology is constantly changing from a new paperclip to an improvement in hospital machinery. Technology lets people improve the way they live so that they can preserve their own personal energy and focus on the really important factors in life. Some people focus their energy on making new innovations to improve transportation and the health of people that may save lives and some people focus on making new designs of packaging CDS. Technology is significant in everyone's life because it rapidly changes what is in the market. But, some new innovations of technology are ridiculous because they serve no purpose in helping mankind.
First of all, the growth of cotton began in the 1800s, and was at high demands. When cotton came into play, more mills and industries began to open. Young men, women, and sometimes children had to come and work in the mills and industries that were opening. To remain at the pace of production, more cotton had to
The economic and social differences between the North and the South brought major tension to the country. After Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton became a very lucrative crop.
In the South, cotton became a profitable cash crop and by the mid-19th century had become America’s leading export (History.com Staff, 2010). Cotton was an ideal crop in many ways, however cotton plants contained seeds that were difficult and labor intensive to separate. In 1794, Eli Whitney invented a machine that would greatly speed up the process of removing the seeds from cotton fibers. The cotton “gin” effectively and efficiently removed the seeds from cotton plants, enabling operators to produce fifty times more cotton that workers could by hand (Tindall, 20121109). Agricultural developments alongside interconnected railroad infrastructure increased productivity and volume, however, technology changed the economic direction in even more profound ways engendering the factory system.
Slavery has been a part of human practices for centuries and dates back to the world’s ancient civilizations. In order for us to recognize modern day slavery we must take a look and understand slavery in the American south before the 1860’s, also known as antebellum slavery. Bouvier’s Law Dictionary defines a slave as, “a man who is by law deprived of his liberty for life, and becomes the property of another” (B.J.R, pg. 479). In the period of antebellum slavery, African Americans were enslaved on small farms, large plantations, in cities and towns, homes, out on fields, industries and transportation. By law, slaves were the perso...
Today there are many technological advancement to enhance our daily activities, whether it be as simple as an Ipod for entertainment purposes or as vital as an artificial heart for the survival of a human live, science and technology is the reason for its existence.