Cotton is a plant that has been used by humans for many years. Thanks to researchers and scientists, we now know that use of cotton dates back to at least seven thousand years according to the shreds of cloth found and written references to cotton. The oldest discovery of cotton was made in a Mexican caves.
Cotton was first referred to in a Hindu book called the Rig-Veda. Therefore, it is believed that cotton was first used in India but people in Peru and Egypt’s Nile Valley was also known to have cotton. According to the documented sightings by the Coronado Expedition, cotton was grown by American Indians in the 1500s. The Spanish started growing it in 1556.
In England in the early 1700s, (the height of the British Empire), it was against the law to import or manufacture clothes from cotton. This law was created so the British could still keep the prices and value of wool high. Although this law prevented cotton from spreading into Britain and its colonies, it spread to America and gradually spread all over the world.
Once people in America had the cotton, they had the potential to produce lots of it but they couldn’t because the process of removing the cotton fiber (lint) from the seed was taking too long. Samuel Slater, an English man, recreated the cotton mill by memory. Eli Whitney saw the need for lint to be extracted faster and he created the cotton gin. This machine would separate the lint from the cotton by itself. Until then, people were doing that by hand. The production of cotton increased by 50 times.
After that, the process of picking the cotton buds from the plant became hard so a picking device was invented in 1850. Its job was to strip bolls (protective capsules) and trash from the plants so it was called a stripper. Gradually, improvements were made to these inventions. More cotton was produced. More uses for cotton was found. Cotton is a major part of daily life now.
Gautham