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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]
While the cotton gin did not earn Whitney the fortune he had hoped for, it did give him fame. It has been argued by some historians that Whitney's cotton gin was an important if unintended cause of the American Civil War. After Whitney's invention, the plantation slavery industry was rejuvenated, eventually culminating in the Civil War. [10]
In the many decades between the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, such divisions became increasingly irreconcilable and contentious. [1] Events in the 1850s culminated with the election of the anti-slavery Republican Abraham Lincoln as president on November 6, 1860.
For a decade and a half after 1865, the end of the Civil War, a number of innovative features became widely used for ginning in the United States.They included steam power instead of animal power, an automatic feeder to assure that the gin stand ran smoothly, a condenser to make the clean cotton coming out of the gin easier to handle, and indoor presses so that cotton no longer had to be ...
Griswold's village, Griswoldville, was an industrial site/company town with a cotton gin plant, soap and tallow factory, candle factory, saw and grist mill, post office and non-denominational church. At the outbreak of the American Civil War , the Griswold cotton gin factory was leased to the Confederate government and retooled to make pistols ...
William Ellison Jr. (April 1790 – December 5, 1861), born April Ellison, was an American cotton gin maker and blacksmith in South Carolina, and former African-American slave who achieved considerable success as a slaveowner before the American Civil War. He eventually became a major planter and one of the wealthiest property owners in the ...
The era of King Cotton was underway by the early 1800s to such an extent that by the mid-19th century, southern slave plantations supplied 75% of the world's cotton. The introduction of the cotton gin was as unexpected as it was unprecedented. British textiles had expanded with no change in ginning principles in centuries.
These seeds are either used again to grow more cotton or, if badly damaged, disposed of. The cotton gin 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. In 1793, Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin and later received a patent ...