Today in History - 1794

Designed to separate cotton fiber from seed, Eli Whitney's cotton gin, for which he received a patent on this day, introduced a new, profitable technology to agricultural production in America.

Though such machines had been around for centuries, Eli Whitney's gin was the first to clean short-staple cotton. A single device could produce up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton in a day (up from one pound a day by hand).
Source