#eli whitney

[stone-cold-groove]

Second day of issue stamps. Eli Whitney and Samuel Morse - 1940.

[derputy]

Part 1 • Part 2 • Part 3 • Part 4 now with (terrible, likely misspelled) captions! - As always, inspired from the wonderful @racheljo47 and @mrspaigeomega who inspired the second one and bonus @captain-spandex who's adorable fanart inspired the last one

[lindahall]

Eli Whitney – Scientist of the Day

Eli Whitney, an American manufacturer and inventor, was born Dec. 8, 1765, in Massachusetts.  

read more...

[whattolearntoday]

A bit of October 28th history...

1492 - Christopher Columbus sights Cuba and claims it for Spain under the name “Juana”

1538 - The 1st university in the New World, the Universidad Santo Tomas de Aquino, is established on Hispaniola

1793 - Eli Whitney applies for a patent on the Cotton Gin

1886 - Statue of Liberty dedicated by US President Cleveland, celebrated by 1st confetti (ticker tape) parade in NYC

1904 - St Louis police try a new investigation method - fingerprints

1919 - Volstead Act passed by US Congress, establishing prohibition, despite President Wilson’s veto

1924 - “Taung Child” discovered in lime quarry in Taung, South Africa; paleoanthropologist Raymond Dart identifies the fossil as a new hominin species, Australopithecus Africanus (thought killed by eagle) (pictured)

1965 - Gateway Arch (630 ft high) completed in St Louis, Missouri

2015 - Research indicating Plague dates back to the Bronze Age in skeletons, 5,783 years old, published

[oupacademic]

A Very Short Fact: On this day in 1794 Eli Whitney was granted a patent for the cotton gin. The machine separated the bolls, or seed pods, from the cotton fibres, which once took hours to do by hand. The demand for cotton in the United States skyrocketed, leading to a growth in slavery in southern states.

“The northern states gradually abolished slavery after independence, leaving it confined to the South. Even there, with soil depletion and emancipation movements, its days seemed numbered. But British and New England textile mills demanded cotton, and Eli Whitney's cotton gin (1793), which mechanized the removal of seeds from the bolls, increased the crop's profitability. Rice, tobacco, and sugarcane remained important, but by 1830 “King Cotton” ruled, with plantations stretching from South Carolina to Texas. In 1860 cotton accounted for nearly 60% of US exports by value.”

[P. 46- American History: A Very Short Introduction by Paul S. Boyer]

Like the Very Short Introductions on Facebook for more from the series.

Image credits: (1): African Americans slaves using the First cotton-gin, 1790-1800, drawn by William L. Sheppard. Illustration in Harper's weekly, 1869 Dec. 18, p. 813. Harpers Weekly's illustration depicting event of some 70 years earlier. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. (2) A cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum by Tom Murphy VII. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

[teded]

From cotton seed to your closet

In honor of Eli Whitney’s birthday today, we thought we’d take a look at clothing production, starting with the cotton seed. The cotton gin was one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution, and is largely responsible for the cotton industry that shaped the American South’s economy. It goes without saying that the cotton industry (and, therefore, the economy) during this time in the U.S. relied predominantly on slave labor and the exploitation of human beings. To this day, the clothing industry employs millions of workers, often with low wages and in poor working conditions. And, clothing production and distribution have an enormous environmental impact. 

We’ll be looking at many of the global effects of the fashion industry in these posts, but today we want to zoom in on the cotton plant and the cotton gin.

Clothing items can vary a lot, but a typical t-shirt begins its life on a farm in America, China, or India where cotton seeds are sown, irrigated and grown for the fluffy bolls they produce. The cotton plants require a huge quantity of water and pesticides. 2,700 liters of water are needed to produce the average t-shirt, enough to fill more than 30 bathtubs. Plus, cotton uses more insecticides and pesticides than any other crop in the world. These pollutants can be carcinogenic, harm the health of field workers, and damage surrounding ecosystems. Some t-shirts are made of organic cotton grown without pesticides and insecticides, but organic cotton makes up less than 1% of the 22.7 million metric tons of cotton produced worldwide.

Self-driving machines carefully harvest these puffs, an industrial cotton gin mechanically separates the fluffy bolls from the seeds.

Then, the cotton lint is pressed into 225-kilogram bales. 

At this point, the cotton bales leave the farm and are shipped to textile mills usually in China or India. 

Next, we’ll take a look at clothing production once it moves to the factory.

Watch The life cycle of a t-shirt - Angel Chang to follow a t-shirt from cotton fields to the shopping mall into your washing machine - and then, maybe, rethink your shopping habits?

Animation by TED-Ed

[todayinhistory]

March 14th 1794: Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin

On this day in 1794, American inventor Eli Whitney recieved a patent for his cotton gin. Whitney, who was born in New England, moved to Georgia in 1792 to work as a tutor on a plantation. Whitney witnessed the system of Southern slavery firsthand, and noted that the growing of cotton - a staple crop on slave plantations - was becoming unprofitable. The one strain of cotton which grew inland had sticky green seeds which were time consuming to pick out of the fluffy cotton balls. Whitney sought to build a machine which would speed up this process, therefore ensuring the continued viability of the Southern cotton-based slave economy. The result of his efforts was the cotton gin, which could separate the seeds from the cotton at speed. Whitney patented his invention in 1794, and with his business partner installed them throughout the South and charged planters for their use. Planters, who resented paying the high price for using the gin, exploited a loophole in the patent law and made their own versions of the machine. The invention of the cotton gin made a significant impact upon the Southern economy and, indeed, the course of American history. After the invention, the yield of raw cotton doubled each decade after 1800, ensuring the continued profitability of slavery in the United States and leading to the growth of American slavery. Using machines of the Industrial Revolution to refine and spin cotton, grown by enslaved people who were not paid for their labour, the United States soon became the world’s leading supplier of cotton. Historians sometimes claim the invention of the cotton gin as a pivotal moment in the coming of the American Civil War. The invention ensured that the evil of slavery continued in the American South, setting the nation on the course to war over the ‘pecular institution’.

[funnyordie]