Cotton Gin

COTTON GIN

COTTON GIN, the implement or machine used to pull the cotton fibers from the seed. Each fiber grows from the seed like hairs from the head. There are two basic types—the black-seed cotton, from which the fibers pull away rather easily, and the green-seed cotton, from which it is difficult to free the fibers. North American colonists commonly used the roller gin, adapted from the "churka" of India, with which cotton fibers were pulled from the seed by hand-turned rollers. These implements could be used only to gin the Sea Island cotton, a black-seed type; the rollers crushed the green seeds and stained the fiber. But in the ever increasing inland acreage, only green-seed cotton could be grown, and this had to be ginned by hand.

In 1792 Eli Whitney, a Yale graduate then tutoring at an estate near Savannah, Georgia, found that many planters were interested in increasing their cotton production but were frustrated By the inefficiency of having to manually remove the seeds before the fiber could be baled for shipment. In a letter to his father (11 September 1793), Whitney wrote that if a machine "could be invented which would clean the Cotton with expedition, it would be a great thing both to the Country and to the inventor." In the same letter he boasted that his invention would "do more than fifty men with the old machines." Although the reference to "old machines" has been interpreted by some authors to mean the roller gins, it may not; there are unproven claims that Whitney had seen machines similar to his prior to his invention. Nevertheless, Eli Whitney was granted a patent on 14 March 1794 for a "new and useful improvement in the mode of Ginning Cotton." His machine used spiked teeth set into a wooden cylinder to pull the cotton fibers through the slots in a metal breastplate; the slots were too small to allow the seeds to pass through. A second cylinder with brushes freed the fibers from the teeth. Court cases involving competing patents for gins with sawtoothed cylinders were found in Whitney's favor; the saw pattern would eventually be preferred as the more efficient system of gin design.

Whitney and his partner, Phineas Miller, kept the cotton gin under their immediate control by selling ginning services, not machines. When a fire in their New Haven manufacturing shop delayed a shipment of gins, southern blacksmiths began making their own versions of the easily copied machine. After years of court suits, several southern states finally paid Whitney. He received almost $100,000 for the patent rights—a relatively modest amount for a patent that would increase cotton production in America from 3,000 bales in 1790 to more than 2 million bales By 1850. By 1836 cotton comprised two-thirds of all American exports. Patented improvements in the mechanization of the earlier roller gin began in the 1830s, and improvements in the saw gin continued throughout the nineteenth century, although the basic principle remained the same.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Britton, Karen G. Bale O'Cotton: The Mechanical Art of Cotton Ginning. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992.

Nevins, Allan, and Jeannette Mirskey. The World of Eli Whitney. New York: MacMillan, 1952.

Grace R. Cooper / a. r.

See also Agricultural Machinery ; King Cotton .