Primitive cotton gin roller being used by two women. This was a device that stripped cotton fibre from the plant's seeds. This design was relatively inefficient, but had been used for thousands of years. The modern cotton gin (using a brush mechanism) was patented in 1793 by the US inventor Eli Whitney (1765-1825). His gin was a huge success, increasing a worker's output by fifty times. This photograph is from a collection of unpublished images, dating from the 1860s to the 1920s, taken for 'The Pageant of America: A Pictorial History of the United States' (1925-1929).