Eli Whitney And The Cotton Gin :: American History

Eli Whitney and the Cotton GinEli Whitney was the inventor of the cotton gin and a pioneer in the mass production of cotton. Whitney was born in Westboro , Massachusetts., on Dec. 8, 1765, and died on Jan. 8, 1825. He graduated from Yale College in 1792. By April 1793, Whitney had designed and constructed the cotton gin, a railroad car that change the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. Eli Whitneys machine could produce up to 23 kg (50 lb) of cleaned cotton daily, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the number 1 time. Unfortunately Whitney failed to profit from his invention imitations of his machine appeared, and his 1794 invention was not upheld until 1807. Eli Whitney and his business partner, Phineas Miller, opted to produce as m some(prenominal) cotton gins as possible, install them throughout gallium and the South, and charge farmers a fee for doing the ginning for them. Their charge was two-fifths of the profit, paid to them in cotton it self. And here, all their troubles began. Farmers throughout Georgia resented having to go to Eli Whitneys cotton gins where they had to pay what they regarded as an extortionate tax. Instead planters began making their own versions of Eli Whitneys gin and claiming they were new inventions. Miller brought costly suits against the owners of these pirated versions but because of a loophole in the wording of the 1793 patent act, they were unable to win any suits until 1800, when the law was changed.Struggling to make a profit and mired in legal battles, the partners finally agreed to license gins at a reasonable price. In 1802, South Carolina agreed to purchase Eli Whitneys patent right for $50,000 but delayed in paying it. The partners also arranged to sell the patent rights to North Carolina and Tennessee. By the time even the Georgia courts recognized the wrongs done to Eli Whitney, only one year of his patent remained. In 1808 and again in 1812 he humbly petitioned sexual intercou rse for a renewal of his patent. In 1798, Eli Whitney invented a way to manufacture muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable. Ironically, it was as a manufacturer of muskets that Whitney finally became rich. context on the Cotton Gin The cotton gin is a device for removing the seeds from cotton fiber. Simple devices for that purpose have been around for centuries, an East Indian machine called a charka was used to separate the seeds from the lint when the fiber was pulled through a set of rollers.