Cotton Gin

Cotton Gin. . Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 while teaching in Georgia. His invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the economy of the American South. With the cotton gin it became easier and quicker to separate the fiber from the seed. Before the invention of the cotton gin, Georgia produced 1,000 bales a year, but by 1860, the yield was 700,000 bales a year., Whitney's gin consisted of a cylinder to which a number of sawlike teeth were attached. As the cylinder revolved, the teeth passed through the closely spaced ribs of a fixed comb. When the cotton was fed into the gin, the teeth caught the cotton fibers and pulled them through the comb. The seeds, which were too large to pass through the ribs, were left behind. This principle, with very little modification, is still employed in the modern gins used today., The actual age of this cotton gin is unknown, but the fact that it sat on a wooden stand makes it very old. It never ginned cotton picked mechanically until 1963, and at that time, it was the oldest cotton gin still in use in Floyd County.