Today in history, October 28th – Eli Whitney a resident of Connecticut applied for a patent for his invention, the cotton gin. The year was 1793, the same year the Louvre opened in Paris, and Noah Webster established New York's first daily newspaper.
Production of cotton expanded from 750,000 bales in 1830, to 2.85 million bales by 1850 as more cotton gins replaced manual labor. One person had to work for ten hours to produce a single pound of fiber but once a cotton gin was added to the process, three people and a gin (short for engine) were able to produce fifty pounds of cotton in one day.
Whitney died in January of 1825 in New Haven, Connecticut and is buried in the city's Grove Cemetery. The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop is located at 915 Whitney Ave, Hamden, CT and has an interesting mix of facts, fun, and exploration. See an animated description of how the cotton gin works, here: http://www.eliwhitney.org/museum/eli-whitney/cotton-gin