<P> Handheld roller gins had been used in the Indian subcontinent since at earliest AD 500 and then in other regions . The Indian worm - gear roller gin, invented some time around the sixteenth century, has, according to Lakwete, remained virtually unchanged up to the present time . A modern mechanical cotton gin was created by American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 and patented in 1794 . Whitney's gin used a combination of a wire screen and small wire hooks to pull the cotton through, while brushes continuously removed the loose cotton lint to prevent jams . It revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States, but also led to the growth of slavery in the American South as the demand for cotton workers rapidly increased . The invention has thus been identified as an inadvertent contributing factor to the outbreak of the American Civil War . Modern automated cotton gins use multiple powered cleaning cylinders and saws, and offer far higher productivity than their hand - powered precursors . </P> <P> Eli Whitney invented his cotton gin in 1793 . He began to work on this project after moving to Georgia in search of work . Given that farmers were desperately searching for a way to make cotton farming profitable, a woman named Catharine Greene provided Whitney with funding to create the first cotton gin . Whitney created two cotton gins: a small one that could be hand - cranked and a large one that could be driven by a horse or water power . Thanks to the cotton gin, the amount of raw cotton yielded had doubled each decade after 1800 . </P> <P> The Ajanta caves of India yield evidence of a single - roller cotton gin in use by the 5th century . This cotton gin was used in India until innovations were made in the form of foot powered gins . The cotton gin was invented in India as a mechanical device known as a charkhi, more technically the "wooden - worm - worked roller". </P> <P> Cotton fibers are produced in the seed pods ("bolls") of the cotton plant where the fibers ("lint") in the bolls are tightly interwoven with seeds . To make the fibers usable, the seeds and fibers must first be separated, a task which had been previously performed manually, with production of cotton requiring hours of labor for the separation . Many simple seed - removing devices had been invented, but until the innovation of the cotton gin, most required significant operator attention and worked only on a small scale . </P>

Who invented the cotton gin and what did it do