Originally Posted by seamstome
I have always wondered what a cotton gin is? I find how things are made interesting.
The original mechanised cotton gin was a screen that used wire hooks to pull the cotton fibres through the screen, which the cottonseeds were too large to pass through, plus brushes that cleaned the cotton fibres off the wire hooks.
Modern cotton gins operate on the same basic principle, but with lots more brushes, screen, etc. And also dryers to drive the remaining moisture out of the cotton fibre, combs to lay the loose fibres down in continuous organised sheets, folding or rolling mechanisms to create bales, etc.
I still wonder what might have happened historically if coloured cotton had become the crop of choice. Natural coloured cotton has a shorter fibre length but the fibres are very loosely attached to the seed and can be easily wiped off by hand or by rolling the bolls between a flat surface and a roller that squeezes the seeds out. Without the need for cheap labour that made white cotton economically feasible to grow, would the US have had slavery? Or would slavery have lasted so long in the US?