Cotton gin

The cotton gin is a machine that quickly separates cotton fibres from the seeds, a slow and labour-intensive task when done by hand. It was built by the American inventor Eli Whitney in Georgia, and patented in 1794. A person using a gin could process many times as much short-staple cotton as before, which made upland cotton, grown across the American South, highly profitable. Instead of reducing the need for slavery, as some had hoped, the invention caused a huge expansion of cotton plantations and of the slave trade within the United States. The cotton also fed textile mills in Britain and New England, and it helped drive the Industrial Revolution.

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