On March 14, 1794, Yankee-born Georgia inventor Eli Whitney received the 72nd patent ever granted by the United States for his game-changing cotton gin. It’s a strange thing, the cotton gin – as much as it did good being the catalyst that helped industrialize the South, it did bad by contributing to the growth of slavery, and, ultimately, the start of the Civil War. Never mind the fact that its story is also an excellent case study of patent licensing & infringement proceedings in a fledgling patent system.
Eli Whitney's cotton gin: important, useful, and highly controversial