Suiter Swantz IP takes a look back at past inventions and inventors with our Patent Of The Day.
On this day in 1794, Eli Whitney was granted U.S. Patent No. 72X for a COTTON GIN.
This invention was designed to increase production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber.
Whitney was introduced to the cotton industry while staying with Catherine Greene on her plantation, Mulberry Grove. Whitney met cotton farmers and learned of the difficulty they had profiting from cotton farming. While cotton was an ideal crop that was hearty and easily grown it was not easy to clean. Cotton plants contained seeds and those seeds had to be removed by hand which was laborious and time consuming. The average cotton pickers would only be able to clean about one pound of cotton per day.
Green encouraged Whitney, morally and financially, to find a solution to the problem. Whitney made it his mission to build a machine that could effectively and efficiently remove cotton seeds and increase production. He called his invention the cotton gin, gin stemming from the word engine. The gin would take the cotton through a wooden drum embedded with hooks. The hooks would catch the cotton fibers and run them through a mesh that was so fine the seeds would get stuck but the hooks continued to pull the cotton leaving the seeds in the mesh.
Although Whitey was granted the patent for his cotton gin, farmers felt Whitney was charging too much for his gin so they started making their own versions and patenting them as “new” inventions. The patent laws in 1793 contained many loop holes which made it difficult for Whitney to sue for infringement. When the patent laws changed in 1800 Whitney was able to successfully sue some of the farmers who infringed on his patent.
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