Historedia
Episode 2 of 2

Patent granted for the cotton gin

When
March 14, 1794
Where
United States patent grant
Part of
Eli Whitney's Cotton Gin Patent

Eli Whitney received a United States patent for his cotton gin on March 14, 1794, after applying the previous October.

Whitney applied for a patent of his cotton gin on October 28, 1793, and the patent was granted on March 14, 1794, later numbered X72. The patent was not validated until 1807. The machine quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, and Whitney had created a modern mechanical version in 1793, specifically a short-staple cotton gin. Thomas Jefferson wrote to Whitney regarding the patent on November 16, 1793, between the application and the grant.

Sources

  1. Cotton gin Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-18
  2. Eli Whitney Wikipedia, revision of 2026-09-01

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.