On this date, 14 March 1794, Eli Whitney patents the cotton gin. In 1791, the amount of cotton that was exported amounted to only 189,500 pounds. In 1803, owing to the use of his invention, it had risen to more than 41 million pounds.

Whitney and his business partner Phineas Miller faced numerous difficulties in bringing the cotton gin to commercial success. The following chronology documents Whitney's trials and triumphs.

1756-12-08: Inventor of the Cotton Gin and a pioneer in the use of mass production methods, Eli Whitney is born in Westborough, Massachusetts.

1792-00-00: Whitney graduates from Yale College.

1792-00-00: He moves to Mulberry Grove, Georgia on the Savannah River where he rooms at the home of Catherine Greene, widow of Revolutionary War Gen. Nathanael Greene. There he studies law and assists her manager, Phineas Miller.

1792-00-00: Mrs. Greene entertains visitors who discuss the slow process of separating green cotton seed from cotton fiber. She suggests that they enjoin Mr. Whitney who, in her words, “could make anything.”

1793-00-00: Whitney creates and demonstrates a working cotton engine, soon to be known as a cotton gin.

1793-05-00: Whitney forms a partnership with Phineas Miller and goes to Connecticut to manufacture the cotton gin.

1793-06-20: Eli Whitney submits a petition for the Cotton gin to Secretary of State, Thomas Jefferson.

1794-03-14: Eli Whitney finally patents the cotton gin.

1798-00-00: Eli Whitney feels that he cannot succeed money-wise with his cotton gin, so he goes on to manufacture fire-arms near New Haven, from which he made his fortune. The firearms factory he builds in New Haven was thus one of the first to use mass production by figuring out how to manufacture muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable.

1825-01-08: Eli Whitney dies. His genius led King Cotton to triumph in the South, but it also created the technology that preserved the Union.

Joan