Today in 1794, Eli Whitney, one of Connecticut’s most influential inventors, received a patent for the Cotton Gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by optimizing the time-intensive task of cleaning seeds from raw cotton bolls.

Born in Massachusetts in 1765, Eli exhibited both interest in talent in manufacturing at an early age, finding work as a blacksmith and pin-maker as a teenager.  As a bright and multi-talented young man who had trouble dedicating himself to just one profession,  Whitney decided to attend Yale College at the age of 23, an unusual choice during an era when most college students were teenage boys.  After graduating four years later, Whitney headed south to find employment as a tutor.  While sailing toward South Carolina, he made the acquaintance of Catherine Greene, widow of the famous Revolutionary War general Nathanial Greene, who invited Whitney to stay on her fiancé’s plantation near Savannah, Georgia.

While in Georgia, Whitney witnessed firsthand the financial difficulties experienced by small to middle-sized Southern plantation owners who lacked a cash crop to export.  Many farmers, including Catherine Greene’s fiancé, attempted to grow short-staple cotton, but were frustrated by how long it took workers — nearly all of whom were slaves — to separate the seeds from the cotton fibers by hand.  Encouraged by Mrs. Greene, Eli Whitney produced a solution in 1793: An engine, or “gin,” that could mechanically pick out seeds from raw cotton by pulling the fibers through a fine metal mesh with a toothed wheel.  Just one of Whitney’s hand-cranked “cotton gins” could process fifty pounds of cotton per day, and larger, horse-pulled versions could process even larger quantities, making cotton an incredibly profitable crop virtually overnight.

Whitney received a patent for his revolutionary invention one year later, on March 14, 1794, but owing to the high fees he wanted to charge for use of his new device, his cotton gin design was widely pirated throughout the southern states, and he spent the next ten years fighting copyright infringements in court — an uphill battle that left him nearly penniless by the time he turned 40.  In 1804, Whitney returned to Connecticut, where he turned his efforts towards transforming the process of arms manufacturing by inventing a system of manufacturing rifles with interchangeable parts from his workshop in Hamden.  In the meantime, cotton cultivation spread through the southern states like wildfire, doubling in yield every ten years following the invention of the cotton gin.  With it came a sharp increase in demand for slave labor, which had actually been experiencing a slight decline before Whitney’s invention transformed southern cash crop agriculture.  Ironically, it was a Connecticut Yankee’s invention that helped set the stage for the resurgence and expansion of slavery in the southern United States that, decades later, would only come to an end after a bloody Civil War.  One of antebellum America’s greatest ironies was first set in motion, today in Connecticut history.

Further Reading:

“The Cotton Gin,” Eli Whitney Museum & Workshop

“The Cotton Gin & Eli Whitney,” history.com