Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin
Eli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the mass production of cotton. Whitney was born in Westboro , Massachusetts., on Dec. 8, 1765, and died on Jan. 8, 1825. He graduated from Yale College in 1792. By April 1793, Whitney had designed and constructed the cotton gin, a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber.
Eli Whitney's machine could produce up to 23 kg (50 lb) of cleaned cotton daily, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the first time. Unfortunately Whitney failed to profit from his invention; imitations of his machine appeared, and his 1794 invention was not upheld until 1807.
Eli Whitney and his business partner, Phineas Miller, opted to produce as many cotton gins as possible, install them throughout Georgia and the South, and charge farmers a fee for doing the ginning for them. Their charge was two-fifths of the profit, paid to them in cotton itself.
And here, all their troubles began. Farmers throughout Georgia resented having to go to Eli Whitney's cotton gins where they had to pay what they regarded as an exorbitant tax. Instead planters began making their own versions of Eli Whitney's gin and claiming they were "new" inventions. Miller brought costly suits against the owners of these pirated versions but because of a loophole in the wording of the 1793 patent act, they were unable to win any suits until 1800, when the law was changed.
Struggling to make a profit and mired in legal battles, the partners finally agreed to license gins at a reasonable price. In 1802, South Carolina agreed to purchase Eli Whitney's patent right for $50,000 but delayed in paying it. The partners also arranged to sell the patent rights to North Carolina and Tennessee. By the time even the Georgia courts recognized the wrongs done to Eli Whitney, only one year of his patent remained. In 1808 and again in 1812 he humbly petitioned Congress for a renewal of his patent.
In 1798, Eli Whitney invented a way to manufacture muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable. Ironically, it was as a manufacturer of muskets that Whitney finally became rich.
Background on the Cotton Gin
The cotton gin is a device for removing the seeds from cotton fiber. Simple devices for that purpose have been around for centuries, an East Indian machine called a charka was used to separate the seeds from the lint when the fiber was pulled through a set of rollers.
Cornelius Vanderbilt was a captain of industry. He came from a poor family and turned into a captain of industry controlling 85% of rail road and inspiring others to follow suit. He did many great things and not so great. Went from making a steamboat ferry to Grand Central Station. By the end of his life he had more than $100 million dollars.
Eli Whitney (A.K.A the Father of Mass Production) realized unlike the long staple, black seed cotton, which seeds came out rather easily, that only grew on the coast, the green seed, short staple cotton’s seed were not out to release from the fibers easily. He and the manager of the plantation constructed a prototype model in a secret garage. It had four compartments; (1) a hopper which feeds the cotton into the gin, (2) a revolving cylinder that had hundreds of short wire hooks set to match fine grooves cut in, (3) stationary breastwork with pulled out the seeds while the fibers flow through, (4) and lastly, a cylinder set with bristles that got the cotton off the bristles. He got that patented in 1794, but kept working at new things. Taking over 10 years to complete, he created a machine that can create muskets from a pile of musket parts. This is what deemed him the father of mass
Before the American civil war, the Southerner’s economy had almost entirely been constructed on slave and cash crop agriculture. The cotton gin was invented by Eli Whitney. The cotton gin was a contraption that transmogrified the fabrication of cotton by significantly making the task of removing seeds from the cotton fiber faster. The invention benefitted the slaves because it saved the slaves
In 1828, Adams was able to piece together a new tariff law that generally satisfied northern manufacturers but alienated southern planters, who denounced it as a "tariff of abominations."
As the Indians used slash and burn to make room for crops when the Americans came to Alabama they learned this type of agriculture and started growing cotton. This led to several events that dramatically affected Alabama's early agricultural development. The Industrial Revolution in Great Britain created a greedy appetite for cotton fiber, and in 1794 Eli Whitney patented a new type of cotton gin in the United States, which lowered the cost of processing fiber. “By the time Alabama became a state in 1819, the interior of the state was easily accessed via the Tombigbee, Warrior, Alabama, and Chattahoochee rivers. Crops could also be transported to European and New England markets via the ports of Mobile and Apalachicola, Florida. Settlers poured into the new state with one objective to grow cotton. As time passed there was almost four million acres of cotton growing in Alabama” (Mitchell, 2007). As time progressed people thought of a new type of agriculture.
Smith, J. 2009. Making Cotton King. World Trade, July 1, 82. http://www.proquest.com.ezproxy1.apus.edu/ (accessed January 6, 2010).
During the period between 1790 and 1850, the United States was rapidly changing. It was now a separate country with its own economy, laws, and government. The country was learning to live on its own, apart from England. There began to appear a rift between North and South. The North believing in the Puritan Merchant role model, and the South in the role model of the English Country Squire. The North traded with everyone, while the South traded primarily with England. The major crop in the South was tobacco, and because of the decline in the price of tobacco the slave trade was dying, just as those in the North hoped it would. Then came a man, and an invention, which changed the course of history. In 1792, Eli Whitney visited the plantation of Catherine Greene, the wife of Revolutionary War general, Nathaniel Greene, near Savannah Georgia. He watched cotton being cleaned; a very long and time consuming process to do by hand. Watching the cotton being cleaned an idea came to Whitney. He decided he would build a machine that would clean cotton faster than it could be done by hand. Thus, he created the cotton gin.
The south, which was mostly agricultural, depended on the production of cotton. It was very important to their economy. Before Eli Whitney’s Cotton Gin was used throughout the south, the United States produced about 750,000 bales of hay in 1830 (How the Cotton Gin). By 1850 it had increased to 2.85 billion bales of hay (How the Cotton Gin). Most of this was in the south because it had the weather conditions needed for cotton to grow. In 1793 Whitney saw the difficulty of taking out cotton seeds by hand (Cefrey 10-11). He decided to create a machine that could clean cotton faster than a human could. The Cotton Gin made the processing of cotton much faster and quicker. As a result of this, land owners were now able to have large cotton plantations across the south (How the Cotton Gin). Southerners were becoming wealthy very fast because of the cotton gin. Eli Whitney’s invention of the Cotton Gin made cotton the South’s main crop making more slave labor needed and political tensions rise.
The reason why slavery spread into the cotton kingdom after revolution is because the tobacco income plummeted as white setters from Virginia and Carolinas forcing the original Native Americans inhabitants farther and farther west where they established plantations. The wide spread use of the cotton gin invented by Eli Whitney in 1793, made these cotton plantations more efficient and profitable. Around 1820, slavery was concentrated in tobacco growing areas of Virginia, Kentucky along coastal region of South Carolina and Northern Georgia and in 1860s it spread deep in the South (Alabama, Texas, Louisiana) following the spread of cotton.
The King Cotton, phrase frequently used by Southerners and authors pre and post-Civil war era, indicating the economic and political importance of cotton production. “After the invention of the cotton gin in 1793. The cotton gin was a machine that easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation”(Cotton in the South, Eichhorn). The cotton gin allowed cotton to surpass tobacco as the dominant cash crop in the agricultural economy of the South, soon comprising more than half the total U.S. exports. “At the time of the American Civil War Southern plantations generated 75% of the world 's cotton supply” (Cotton in the South). Throughout this essay I will examine the North Atlantic
Elijah McCoy was an important engineer and inventor in the mid 1800s and early 1900s. He invented many machines and had many ideas about how to make everyday life easier. Even though he had a hard time becoming an engineer, he eventually became one of the first African American engineers. He developed designs for an ironing board, a lawn sprinkler, and other machines. His name did not appear on the majority of the products that he devised.
Along with Whitney's cotton gin, inventions in society came about. This was a stark contrast to pre Jacksonian rule out of which few inventions came: The decade ending in 1800 saw only 306 patents, while the decade ending in 1860 saw 26,000 patents. Elias Howe and Isaac Singer contributed to the clothing industry with their 1846 invention of the sewing machine. This contributed to northern industrialization, and when combined with the power of steam to produce an automatic sewing machine, it was capable of producing clothing on its own in large quantities with little supervision. John Deere helped to revolutionize farming once more with his invention of the steel plow in 1837. This plow enabled the "virgin soil" of Western lands to be broken, furthering agriculture. It was also light enough to be horse-drawn, which meant it was easily maneuverable. Cyrus McCormick's 1831 horse-drawn grass reaper enabled one man to do the work of five. This caused an abundance of cash crops to be produced.
The "technological retardist" theories are strongest in considering the erosion of "King Cotton` s" pre eminence, due in part to America` s competition and, the critics suggest, the British cotton manager` s lack of judgement. It is said that the slow adoption of the ring spindle in spinning, and the low uptake of the automatic loom in weaving seriously hampered those industries` competitive edge.
Sugar plantations have a field where sugar cane stalks are cut and grown and then there are boiling house where sugar cane stalks are crushed and boiled which is all runned by slave labor. Because slaves planted the cane stalks, harvested sugar stalks, crushed them, and boiled the sugar stalks sugar was made(8). According to David richardson the slave Trade, Sugar, and British Economic growth, “An Average purchase price of adult male slave on west African coast in 1748 was 14£ and in 1768 was 16£”(9a).Because slaves were so cheap slave traders may profit by, selling adult male slaves to sugar plantation owners for twice as much as they bought them in Africa. John Campbell Candid and Impartial Considerations on the Nature of the Sugar Trade describes the slaves as “so necessary Negro slaves purchased in Africa by English merchants”(11). Because africa trade slaves to English merchants Africans got things they did not
The cotton gin was a machine that cleaned cotton, especially short-stemmed cotton. The cotton gin consisted of spiked teeth on a boxed revolving cylinder. When it was turned by a crank, the cotton fiber was pulled through small slotted openings to separate the seeds from the lint. While that was happening a rotating brush, operated by belts and pulleys, removed the ropey lint from the spikes. A machine had been invented before to clean long-staple cotton called a “Charka.” It was invented in Ancient India. Eli Whitney had no idea that a machine existed while he made his machine.