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Early cotton gin
Early Cotton Gin used roller gin which is hand-cranked and foot powered. The cotton would go inside 2 rollers but since the seed was solid, it did not go through. These versions had been used in China, India, and the Levant. These were imported into the New World when cotton production started in the Caribbean. -
Powered "Barrel" Gin
Powered “barrel” gin attempted to expand ginning output. Joseph Eve’s received a patent in 1788 for the self-feeding roller gin which could be water, wind or animal powered. -
Problem with short staple cotton
When Eli Whitney went to accept a tutoring job in Georgia. He met Mrs Green who owned a plantation called Mulberry Grove in Georgia. He discovered that most farms could only grow short staple cotton which was hard and expensive to clean. The seeds had to be taken by hand = many stopped growing cotton -
Eli Whitney's Cotton
Eli Whitney’s cotton gin was invented, prioritized quality over quantity.
Luxury Markets wanted to keep fibre quality = relied on roller gin removal. This idea was prominent along the South Caroline and Georgia Coast where long-staple cotton (more easily ginned) transplant grown from South America.
Larger mass-production textile market adapted to lower-quality ginned cotton from Whitney’s gin. Used for the rapid expansion production of fuzzy-seed cotton that grew in most of the interior south. -
Patent for the Saw Gin
A model of the cotton gin was made by John Barcley in 1795. 1796, Hodgen Holmes received patent for his “saw” gin. Eli Whitney and Miller responded that it was a modification from their design and that he was not able to get a new patent for the entire machine if he only changed one part of it.
Although Whitney and Miller said that wire teeth were preferable, they supplied people with saw gins in the late 1790s since it was their preference. -
Problem with Eli Whitney's design
Eli Whitney’s original design with the wired teeth design for the cotton removal were challenging in cotton gin construction and use wired teeth design mostly abandoned before his patent expired in 1807.
Southern mechanics tried to solve it by replacing it with circular saws for the purpose of snaring the cotton fibre. -
Cylinder Gin
Fones Mcarthy patented a back and forwards movement knife principle to cut the seeds from the cotton. It became the most used method for ginning luxury long-staple cotton.
Production of that cotton type rose in Egypt and other British dominions McCarthy gin went to English machinery firms. “Cylinder” or “card” gins were patented multiple times. It was a mix of Whitney’s wired teeth and roller gins.
Common saw gin remains the concept behind ginning short-staple cotton to this day.