Cotton Gin

Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin in 1793 while teaching in Georgia, and the invention revolutionized the economy of the American South by making it easier and quicker to separate cotton fiber from seed. Before the cotton gin, Georgia produced 1,000 bales a year, but by 1860 the yield was 700,000 bales a year. Whitney's gin used a revolving cylinder fitted with sawlike teeth that passed through the closely spaced ribs of a fixed comb; when cotton was fed into the gin, the teeth pulled the fibers through the comb while the larger seeds were left behind. This principle, with very little modification, is still employed in modern gins. The actual age of this cotton gin is unknown, but its wooden stand indicates that it is very old, and it never ginned mechanically picked cotton until 1963, when it was the oldest cotton gin still in use in Floyd County.

Rome, Georgia · United States