Turning A Problem Around: The Whitney Cotton Gin
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 the low-efficiency of human labor with machines. The development of the cotton gin — patented in 1794 — involves an interesting lesson about solving engineering problems.
Farmers in the southern United States had a big problem. Tobacco was a cash crop, but it eventually left your fields barren and how to solve that problem wasn’t understood yet. Indigo was valuable for dye, but the British were eating away that market with indigo created in its colonies. Rice requires a lot of water and swamp, so it was only suitable for certain areas.
There was one thing that grew very readily in much of the land: cotton. Unfortunately, the cotton had little seeds you had to remove. A single person could clean — maybe — a pound of cotton a day. In the late 1700s, plantation owner Catharine Littlefield Greene introduced Whitney to a group of farmers were trying to decide if there was a way to make cotton a more profitable crop.
Solving the Wrong Problem
Reportedly, Whitney found inspiration in a very strange way. He couldn’t figure out how to remove the little entrenched seeds from the cotton. But one day he saw a cat trying to pull a chicken through a fence. The cat was unsuccessful but managed to get some feathers. That was the key: Don’t try to remove the seeds from the cotton, but remove the cotton from the seeds.
The gin — short for engine — had tiny hooks that would pull cotton fibers or lint through a mesh. The seeds couldn’t make it through. By changing the machine from one that removes seeds to one that removes cotton, the design was very simple.
An 1883 article in the North American Review claimed that Mrs. Greene had made some suggestions about the design of the machine. However, the author didn’t provide any source for the claim and it remains unproven. It wouldn’t be surprising, though. Greene certainly provided financial support as well as encouragement.
Greene’s plantation manager, Phineas Miller, became Whitney’s business partner. Whitney, Miller, and Greene did not intend to sell the gin, instead planning a model where they would own all the machines and take a percentage of the clean cotton as a fee. Cotton as a service, if you will. The gin could do about 55 pounds a day, so one simple machine and one or two people could do the work of at least 55 people.
Aftermath
The gin made cotton profitable which was a boon to the south, but did manage to keep slavery going for another seven decades — that wasn’t Witney’s intent, of course. The service model failed because the device was simple enough, that people copied it — illegally, in light of the new patent laws. In the end, he didn’t make the money he hoped for, although he did make some and became famous for his labor-saving invention. He would go on to pioneer the use of interchangeable parts in manufacturing, but that’s an entirely different story.
How many times are we faced with a problem that we can’t quite solve? It is worth taking a page from Whitney’s book and asking yourself how to flip the problem around to see if that helps. We are just glad the gin shorthand didn’t catch on as we’d hate to have to say we work as gingineers.
[Patent drawing via the National Archives]
18 thoughts on “Turning A Problem Around: The Whitney Cotton Gin”
I heard in school that the ‘gin’ was from genie or djin/dgin.
More likely it came from a shortening of ‘engine’ as that usage was recorded elsewhere: it seems to be a spontaneous contraction for English speakers.
so the cotton gin was in fact invented by a cat. curse you propaganda mill posing as elementary school!
IIRC, a patent prevents someone from selling copies of an invention. It does not prevent someone from creating their own copy of the invention. It would not prevent someone from making a cotton gin of their own and then use that to process cotton.
Correct?
IANAL, so I could be entirely wrong, but a patent only allows non-commercial duplication/use. So even if you made your own copy of a patented gizmo to use in your business, that would still be infringement.
The patent “bargain” is that in return for a monopoly for a limited time, you have to publicly document the invention. The world gets to benefit from your genius, and in return you get to cash in for a while.
That’s the principle, anyway.
>Correct?
Incorrect!
No, not correct. You can’t just copy someone else’s design, even if you just intend to copy a design for your own personal use. Otherwise we’d have no need for a patent office. A U.S. patent is good for 14 years (I think it’s seven, but renewable for another seven.)
That said, people often work out ways to get around the patent. In one famous case, an inventor used a cam to convert rotary motion to linear motion. Someone else used an eccentric (like the big end of an auto connecting rod) to do the same thing.
Which is why we _DO_ need a patent office, and also lots of lawyers who represent both inventors and copiers.
Yes you can. The whole point of patents is that someone else can re-create the invention to investigate and evaluate how it works, and learn from it – just not use it or sell it for profit without a license from the original inventor.
The question is moot, because patent infringement is not a crime – it’s a civil liability so you actually have to be sued for it – and if nobody knows or cares that you’re doing it then you can just keep on doing it.
Not correct in the USA, but in some other jurisdictions, true.
In the US, even if for personal use, it is a violation to use a patented “invention” (the quotes because the rules use the word, but the definition has been stretched well beyond what common sense might imply). I do not know if the law was the same circa 1800, as any patents from that time are long, long expired, and there have been a lot of changes to the law since then.
The international laws, ad assorted interlocking treaties, make it a much more interesting problem, should your interests turn that way. My interests don’t, but I have an attorney who does have that kink.
Yes this appears to be a Euro vs. US thing. In Europe, you can make use of an invention privately, but you cannot sell instances of the invention. Presumably, this could extent to not being able to sell the cotton processed, but that is less clear.
“Reportedly, Whitney found inspiration in a very strange way. He couldn’t figure out how to remove the little entrenched seeds from the cotton. But one day he saw a cat trying to pull a chicken through a fence. ”
And this is why cats rule. Hang around long enough and they’ll show us how to crack the sound barrier.
Have you never seen a cat make a quick getaway from its’ litterbox?
My cat does several subsonic laps around the house after taking a dump. And judging where he is running from, I can tell if he’s used the litter box, or the palm tree in the corner of the dining room…
For the record, possums will also try to pull chickens through chicken wire. Also, they succeed where cats fail–my fail of the week, wrong mesh for bottom of chicken tractor….
Regardless of the intent of patent law, a patent is only a “hunting license,” and lawsuits are expensive, so going after individuals is not particularly practical. And back then waiting 17 years for the patent to expire was not an eternity.
When I toured the Museum of Science and Technology (that might not be its “real” name) in Birmingham, England, several years ago. I was surprised to hear the tour guide say the cotton gin was invented in England.
At one point Birmingham produced 80% of the world’s textiles, so they had a large area of the museum dedicated to that part of their history, The tours walked people around a large pit, In it was the equipment used to gin, card, spin, weave the cotton, the guides operated some of the machinery. After the tour, some of us stayed to watch the Jacquard Loom in action.
Definitely a “must see” place for any nerd to spend an afternoon!Dang it!
I meant “Manchester”
(forgive me Utd and City fans!)
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