Martin Antonenko
A Fixture
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2008
- Messages
- 8,994
Hardly any other invention
cost more lives as a result...!
On March 14, 1794, the cotton farmer and inventor Eli Whitney...
...patent the so-called "Egrenier machine" he invented...:
Here is a replica of the original in the museum...:
Doesn't look that bad, does it?
And yet one can rightly say that hardly any other invention - apart from gunpowder and the automobile - has had such a massive impact on the course of history and cost so many lives as Whitney's invention:
The "Egrenier machine" is a device with which large quantities of cotton could be cored and thus cleaned in a short time.
The cotton plant, on the other hand, thrived splendidly under the climatic conditions prevailing in the southern states of the USA...:
To the annoyance of the cotton growers, however, the cultivation did not pay off!
Because in order to be further processed into the woolen fabrics indispensable for clothing production, each individual picked cotton blossom had to be laboriously gutted by hand!
Even a trained worker (or slave) could barely manage more than a kilo a day!
Eli Whitney's invention solves this problem: His crank-operated machine can gut tens of times as many workers in a very short time!
Cotton production is skyrocketing in the southern United States...:
As well as the "import" of slaves, who now only have to pick the flowers and carry them to Whitney's machine...:
Slavery in the cotton states literally exploded: When Whitney invented his machine, there were 460,000 slaves living in the entire USA - in 1865 there were more than four million in the southern states alone!
This forced labor made many landowners fabulously rich - on the eve of the US Civil War, the southern United States was the region with the highest "density" of millionaires in the world!
How many of the forced laborers fell victim to "King Cotton" and the methods of their "owners" has never been clarified.
What is certain is that the "slave question" led directly to the American Civil War - which in its four years claimed the lives of 620,000 soldiers (and again countless non-combatants) - more than in all other wars combined that the USA has ever fought...:
And what is also certain is that it all started with the invention of Eli Whitney...
cost more lives as a result...!
On March 14, 1794, the cotton farmer and inventor Eli Whitney...
...patent the so-called "Egrenier machine" he invented...:
Here is a replica of the original in the museum...:
Doesn't look that bad, does it?
And yet one can rightly say that hardly any other invention - apart from gunpowder and the automobile - has had such a massive impact on the course of history and cost so many lives as Whitney's invention:
The "Egrenier machine" is a device with which large quantities of cotton could be cored and thus cleaned in a short time.
The cotton plant, on the other hand, thrived splendidly under the climatic conditions prevailing in the southern states of the USA...:
To the annoyance of the cotton growers, however, the cultivation did not pay off!
Because in order to be further processed into the woolen fabrics indispensable for clothing production, each individual picked cotton blossom had to be laboriously gutted by hand!
Even a trained worker (or slave) could barely manage more than a kilo a day!
Eli Whitney's invention solves this problem: His crank-operated machine can gut tens of times as many workers in a very short time!
Cotton production is skyrocketing in the southern United States...:
As well as the "import" of slaves, who now only have to pick the flowers and carry them to Whitney's machine...:
Slavery in the cotton states literally exploded: When Whitney invented his machine, there were 460,000 slaves living in the entire USA - in 1865 there were more than four million in the southern states alone!
This forced labor made many landowners fabulously rich - on the eve of the US Civil War, the southern United States was the region with the highest "density" of millionaires in the world!
How many of the forced laborers fell victim to "King Cotton" and the methods of their "owners" has never been clarified.
What is certain is that the "slave question" led directly to the American Civil War - which in its four years claimed the lives of 620,000 soldiers (and again countless non-combatants) - more than in all other wars combined that the USA has ever fought...:
And what is also certain is that it all started with the invention of Eli Whitney...
