Was a machine for removing the seeds in cotton quickly?
Originally people called "cotton pickers" removed the seeds from
raw cotton by hand, but this was slow and labor intensive. Eli
Whitney invented a machine called the "Cotton Engine" (shortened in
common usage to the "Cotton Gin") that removed the seeds from raw
cotton quickly and easily. Unfortunately he made no money from this
invention as it was so simple that anyone needing one simply made
it himself.
The Cotton Gin saved the south's Plantation slave based economy,
until the Civil War.