Note (return) — Chapter XV
Reading edition
His machine was very simple, but none the less ingenious on that account. The cotton was placed in a trough, the bottom of which consisted of parallel rows of wire, placed like the bars in a grating, but so close together that the seed could not pass through them. Underneath this trough revolved an iron roller, armed with teeth formed of strong wires projecting from the roller, which passed between the wire bars, and, seizing the cotton, drew it through the bars and passed it behind the roller, where it was brushed off the wire teeth by means of a cylindrical brush. The seed, unable to pass through the bars, were left behind, and, completely stripped of the fiber, ran out in a stream through a spout at one end of the trough. It was found that the cotton thus ginned was cleaned thoroughly,[I] and far better than it could be done by hand, and that a single man, by this process, could clean as much as three hundred pounds in a day.