The cotton gin boosted American cotton production from 1.5 million to 189 million pounds in just 15 years.

Invented by Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794, the cotton gin solved a major bottleneck in textile production. Before this invention, a single worker could only clean about one pound of short-staple cotton per day by hand. The mechanical gin used a system of hooks, wires, and a rotating drum to pull cotton fibers through a mesh, leaving the sticky seeds behind. A single engine-driven cotton gin could process over 50 pounds of cotton in a single day, a fifty-fold increase in productivity. This efficiency caused American exports to England to jump from less than 500,000 pounds in 1793 to 18 million pounds by 1800. By the mid-19th century, the United States was providing 75% of the world's cotton supply, primarily to British textile mills. The economic impact was staggering, as cotton became the United States' leading export, accounting for over half of all domestic exports by 1860. However, this technological boom also had a dark side, as it solidified the plantation economy and dramatically increased the demand for enslaved labor. The total number of enslaved people in the U.S. rose from roughly 700,000 in 1790 to nearly 4 million by the start of the Civil War in 1861.