The cotton gin’s invention served as the first test of the newly created U.S. patent system. The technical problems of Eli Whitney’s design led to almost immediate modifications that were put into place by other farmers and inventors. The wire teeth on the revolving cylinder, for example, were quickly replaced by a series of circular saws.
The origins of the modification are foggy, but as more gins with these saws were distributed, Whitney claimed that their design was an obvious variation of his own, and thus covered under his patent. Though the courts ruled in Whitney’s favor, countless legal battles ensued due to the shaky nature of Whitney’s patent.
Initial Plans To Operate Gins
Whitney and Phineas Miller, his business partner, had originally decided to produce a large number of gins, install them throughout Georgia and the South, and charge farmers a fee for using the gins. Farmers throughout Georgia resented having to pay what they felt was an exorbitant tax and opted instead to make their own variations of Whitney’s design.
Miller brought lawsuits against the makers of these lifted versions, but because of a loophole in the wording of the 1793 patent act, he and Whitney were unable to win any suits until 1802. In a desperate effort to make a profit, Whitney and Miller began selling licenses to manufacture the gin, but they failed to make a large return by the time Whitney’s patent expired in 1807.
Though most evidence indicates that Whitney was the sole inventor of the cotton gin, many historians believe he was either aided or preceded by another in the design and invention of the machine. The most widely circulated claim to the invention of the cotton gin has been argued on behalf of Catharine Greene, Whitney’s hostess while in Georgia.
Greene was deeply interested in the solution to the mechanical problems presented by the processing of short-staple cotton, and many have contended that she aided Whitney in the gin’s creation but avoided the connection of her name to the invention. Other historians have credited Hogden Holmes, a Scottish immigrant; Robert Watkins, an Augusta businessman and attorney; and William Longstreet, inventor of the precursor to the sewing machine, with the saws that made the gin a profitable success. All three of these men were issued patents for improvements to the cotton gin by 1796. Most evidence indicates, however, that Whitney did invent the saw gin.
Later Developments
During the 1820s, the first successful cotton gin factories appeared. Before the Civil War (1861-65), the cotton gins they produced were sold primarily to farmers, who would install them on their property and use them to gin their own cotton. After the Civil War, however, farmers were more likely to take their seeded cotton to a ginner, who would remove the seeds for a fee in a method called “custom ginning.”
The factory setting of custom ginning demanded efficiency during the whole ginning process, rather than just of the gin itself, and innovations in ginning began to focus more on the quantity and speed with which these factories could process cotton.
In the mid-1880s Robert Munger of Texas developed “system ginning,” a process by which seeded cotton was fed continuously into multiple gins stands, from which the fiber was immediately pressed and baled. Munger’s system effectively ended the era of plantation gins and small cotton-gin makers and merchants.
The modern cotton ginning process has continued in Georgia and the Southeast and can also be found in the major cotton producing areas of the southwestern United States and overseas. Cottonseed oil, one of the by-products of cotton production, is commonly used in potato chips and other processed foods. Some consumers are wary of cottonseed oil in foods, as it contains highly toxic gossypol, and is taken from one of the most chemically intensive crops grown in the United States.
Today, only a few technologically sophisticated firms produce cotton gins based on the designs of specialized engineers. The largest of those companies, the Lummus Corp., located in Savannah, Georgia, has brought short-staple cotton production back to its roots at Mulberry Grove.