What inspired Eli Whitney to invent the cotton gin?

honeybee4

Eli Whitney was inspired by watching a cat pull a chicken through the wire, and could pull through only some of the feathers. http://www.juliantrubin.com/bigten/whitneycottongin.html May 26 11, 7:27 AM

Shiningstar7

The modern version of the cotton gin was created by the American inventor Eli Whitney in 1793 to mechanize the cleaning of cotton. The invention was granted a patent on March 14, 1794. There is slight controversy over whether the idea of the cotton gin and its constituent elements are correctly attributed to Eli Whitney. The popular version of Whitney inventing the cotton gin is attributed to an article on the subject in the early 1870s and later reprinted in 1910 in The Library of Southern Literature. In this article the author claims that Catherine Littlefield Greene suggested to Whitney the use of a brush-like component instrumental in separating out the seeds and cotton. To date there has been no independent verification of Greene's role in the invention of the gin. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cotton_gin May 26 11, 7:46 PM