If you went to elementary school in the United States, you no doubt learned about Eli Whitney’s cotton gin as an example of how the industrial revolution took previously manual processes and replaced ...

Over 14 million bales of cotton will be harvested in the U.S. this season, according to the United States Department of Agriculture. All of that cotton will run through a machine invented in Savannah ...

click image for close-up In October of 1793, Eli Whitney sent a drawing of his new invention, the cotton gin, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in application for a patent. Jefferson replied on ...

Westborough is forming a committee to review whether the town should change its official seal, an emblem that currently features Eli Whitney’s cotton gin. Whitney, who was born in Westborough in 1765 ...

Why is Whitney So Important? Next on our list of Top Ten Patent Wars is not the one that most patent historians think of, the so-called “Sewing Machine” Wars of the 1850s-1860s, which is intriguing ...

This media is in the public domain (free of copyright restrictions). You can copy, modify, and distribute this work without contacting the Smithsonian. For more information, visit the Smithsonian's ...

IIIF provides researchers rich metadata and media viewing options for comparison of works across cultural heritage collections. Visit the IIIF page to learn more. A model of the Cotton Gin invented by ...