Cotton Gin

Eli Whitney, USA, patent X72 of 1794. The machine that industrialized cotton and entrenched slavery.

Overview

Whitney's toothed cylinder separated seeds from short-staple cotton fifty times faster than hand labor. His business model of monopolizing ginning backfired: planters copied the simple machine so widely that enforcement collapsed, and he spent years in fruitless litigation. The gin made cotton king in the American South, multiplying the demand for enslaved labor and setting conditions for the Civil War. One of history's most consequential and least profitable famous patents.