![]() The average cotton picker could remove the seeds from only about one pound of short-staple cotton per day. The vast majority of cotton farmers were forced to grow the more labor-intensive short-staple cotton, which had to be cleaned painstakingly by hand, one plant at a time. A type of cotton known as long staple was easy to clean, but grew well only along coastal areas. ![]() But cotton plants contained seeds that were difficult to separate from the soft fibers. In many ways, cotton was an ideal crop it was easily grown, and unlike food crops its fibers could be stored for long periods of time. Others believe the idea was Whitney's but Greene played an important role as both designer and financier. While there, Whitney learned about cotton production–in particular, the difficulty cotton farmers faced making a living.ĭid you know? Some historians believe Catherine Greene devised the cotton gin and Eli Whitney merely built it and applied for the patent, since at that time women were not allowed to file for patents. He originally planned to work as a private tutor but instead accepted an invitation to stay with Catherine Greene (1755–1814), the widow of American Revolutionary War (1775-83) general Nathanael Greene, on her plantation, known as Mulberry Grove, near Savannah, Georgia. In 1792, after graduating from Yale College (now Yale University), Whitney headed to the South. Among the objects he designed and built as a youth were a nail forge and a violin. Growing up, Whitney, whose father was a farmer, proved to be a talented mechanic and inventor. With a reaper, one man with a horse could harvest large fields in a day.Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765, in Westborough, Massachusetts. Because farmers could harvest more, they could plant more. The McCormick Reaper revolutionized agriculture, making it possible to harvest large areas of grain much faster than could have been done by men wielding scythes. ![]() Farmers could now process more wheat much quicker and with less labor force. This machine proved to be the answer for wheat farmers because it increased food production as well as made harvesting easier. The mechanical reaper was used by farmers to harvest crops mechanically. labor force was connected to agriculture in 1820 by 1968, that number had dropped to just 5%. Crops could be cut far faster than before, and with fewer farm hands to pay. The impact of McCormick’s reaper was profound. His company later became International Harvester (1902) and today is known as Navistar Corporation How did the mechanical reaper impact society? ![]() Today’s combines still use the basic features present in McCormick’s revolutionary 1831 invention. The new reaper-thresher machine was called a combine. It worked in this way: a straight blade (protected by guards) was linked to a drive wheel as the drive wheel turned, the blade moved back and forth in a sawing motion, cutting through the stalks of grain, which were held straight by rods the cut grain stalks then fell onto a platform and were collected with a rake by Is the reaper machine still used today? Read also : How does ownership work in a mixed economy? How does the reaper machine work?
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