Cotton gin in the context of "Eli Whitney"

Textile arts are arts and crafts that use plant, animal, or synthetic fibers to construct practical or decorative objects.

Textiles have been a fundamental part of human life since the beginning of civilization. The methods and materials used to make them have expanded enormously, while the functions of textiles have remained the same, there are many functions for textiles. Whether it be clothing or something decorative for the house/shelter. The history of textile arts is also the history of international trade. Tyrian purple dye was an important trade good in the ancient Mediterranean. The Silk Road brought Chinese silk to India, Africa, and Europe, and, conversely, Sogdian silk to China. Tastes for imported luxury fabrics led to sumptuary laws during the Middle Ages and Renaissance. The Industrial Revolution was shaped largely by innovation in textiles technology: the cotton gin, the spinning jenny, and the power loom mechanized production and led to the Luddite rebellion.

The technological and industrial history of the United States describes the emergence of the United States as one of the most technologically advanced nations in the world in the 19th and 20th centuries. The availability of land and literate labor, the absence of a landed aristocracy, the prestige of entrepreneurship, the diversity of climate and large easily accessed upscale and literate markets all contributed to America's rapid industrialization.

The availability of capital, development by the free market of navigable rivers and coastal waterways, as well as the abundance of natural resources facilitated the cheap extraction of energy all contributed to America's rapid industrialization. Fast transport by the first transcontinental railroad built in the mid-19th century, and the Interstate Highway System built in the late 20th century, enlarged the markets and reduced shipping and production costs. The legal system facilitated business operations and guaranteed contracts. Cut off from Europe by the embargo and the British blockade in the War of 1812 (1807–15), entrepreneurs opened factories in the Northeastern United States that set the stage for rapid industrialization modeled on British innovations.

Clothing industry, or garment industry, refers to the range of trade and industry sectors involved in the production and value chain of clothing and garments. This includes the textile industry (producers of cotton, wool, fur, and synthetic fibre), embellishment using embroidery, the fashion industry, apparel retailers, and trade in second-hand clothes and textile recycling. Textile factories are also called "mills". Textiles factories or "mills" turn the natural or synthetic materials into Yarn which will be sent for weaving and knitting (process of turning yarn into a textile cloth). Then apparel textile mills make wearable pieces from those textile cloths. The producing sectors build upon a wealth of clothing technology some of which, like the loom, the cotton gin, and the sewing machine heralded industrialization not only of the previous textile manufacturing practices. Clothing industries are also known as allied industries, fashion industries, garment industries, or soft goods industries.

A worm drive is a gear arrangement in which a worm (which is a gear in the form of a screw) meshes with a worm wheel (which is similar in appearance to a spur gear). Its main purpose is to translate the motion of two perpendicular axes or to translate circular motion to linear motion (example: band type hose clamp).The two elements are also called the worm screw and worm gear. The terminology is often confused by imprecise use of the term worm gear to refer to the worm, the worm wheel, or the worm drive as a unit.

The worm drive or "endless screw" was invented by either Archytas of Tarentum, Apollonius of Perga, or Archimedes, the last one being the most probable author. The worm drive later appeared in the Indian subcontinent, for use in roller cotton gins, during the Delhi Sultanate in the thirteenth or fourteenth centuries.

The internal slave trade in the United States, also known as the domestic slave trade, the Second Middle Passage and the interregional slave trade, was the mercantile trade of enslaved people within the United States. It was most significant after 1808, when the importation of slaves from Africa was prohibited by federal law. Historians estimate that upwards of one million slaves were forcibly relocated from the Upper South, places like Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Missouri, to the territories and states of the Deep South, especially Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and Texas.

Economists say that transactions in the inter-regional slave market were driven primarily by differences in the marginal productivity of labor, which were based in the relative advantage between climates for the production of staple goods. The trade was strongly influenced by the invention of the cotton gin, which made short-staple cotton profitable for cultivation across large swathes of the upland Deep South (the Black Belt). Previously the commodity was based on long-staple cotton cultivated in coastal areas and the Sea Islands.

The Cotton Belt is a region of the Southern United States where cotton was the predominant cash crop from the late 19th century into the 20th century.

Before the invention of the cotton gin in 1793, cotton production was limited to coastal plain areas of North Carolina, South Carolina and Georgia, and, on a smaller scale, along the lower Mississippi River. The cotton gin allowed profitable processing of short-staple cotton, which could be grown in the upland regions of the Deep South. After 1793 the Natchez District rapidly became the leading cotton-producing region in Mississippi. Natchez planters developed new cotton plant hybrids and a mechanized system that fueled the spread of the cotton plantation system throughout the Old Southeast. The demand by European Americans for land to develop for upland cotton drove the removal of Native American tribes from the Southeast after 1830. The central part of this area, extending into Texas, became known as the Black Belt due to the color of the fertile soil and later the high proportion of slave population.