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Article: Improved ginning for better cotton.
- Article from:
- Agricultural Research
- Article date:
- December 1, 1992
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1992 U.S. Government Printing Office. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Cotton ginning technology has changed a lot since March 14, 1794, when Eli Whitney won a patent for a new invention. The cotton gin--which would eventually transform the South's economy and, ultimately, the nation's politics--would also make cotton the "king" of U.S. crops.
Before Whitney's invention, only a slick-seeded cotton variety grown exclusively in Southern coastal regions could be easily cleaned of seeds by textile mills. But the advent of the cotton gin enabled the South to also grow higher yielding varieties.
By today's standards, Whitney's invention was a crude machine, consisting largely of a box in which two revolving cylinders--one ...