Eli Whitney Patents the Cotton Gin
On this day in 1794, Westborough native Eli Whitney applied for a patent on the cotton gin. Raised on a farm in Massachusetts, he invented a machine that made growing cotton so profitable that the South became a "cotton kingdom" based on the labor of thousands of enslaved men and women. After nearly a decade in the South, Whitney returned to New England and developed what became known as the "American System" of manufacture. He designed machines that turned out standardized, interchangeable parts. These machines made mass production possible and were critical to the coming Industrial Revolution. Eli Whitney's innovations transformed the economy first of the American South and later of the North.
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