click image for close-up In October of 1793, Eli Whitney sent a drawing of his new invention, the cotton gin, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in application for a patent. Jefferson replied ...

Engineer Eli Whitney died 35 years before the Civil War, but his most famous invention, the cotton gin, set the economic stage for war. Whitney's gin made cotton production far more efficient ...

If you went to elementary school in the United States, you no doubt learned about Eli Whitney’s cotton gin ... and became famous for his labor-saving invention. He would go on to pioneer the ...