Politics

With everything there always has to be politics involved, and the cotton gin was no exception. The creation of the cotton gin was a huge break through and many people who wanted a cotton gin but could not afford it, or somehow could not find means of obtaining a cotton gin, attempted to make their own cotton gin's. This led to the frustration of Eli Whitney and was quickly followed up with a lawsuit. However, because the people had used their own ways of creating the cotton gin, it was technically not illegal. The cotton gin was finally patented on March 14, 1774. Some think Catherine Littlefield Greene, who was Eli Whitney's landlady, should be given credit for the invention of the cotton gin, or at least with the original idea, because she shared the idea with him of how it would be great if there was a device to separate the cotton from the seed. Also a method that might do so, she suggested the use of a brush-like component in order to do so. There is also the debate that maybe the idea was the landlady, Greene's idea all along. Women were not allowed to obtain patents back in the late 1700's so there is the possibility that Greene had asked Whitney to get a patent on the cotton gin for her, and he passed the idea off as his own. So even a simple object like the cotton gin had politics involved in it, and the simple object made a huge impact on the world.

Simple things don’t always take the greatest minds, and most of the time, it’s the simple things that work the best.
-Nick Letendre