Cotton
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Cotton is a soft, fluffy staple fiber that grows in a boll, or protective case, around the seeds of the cotton plants of the genus Gossypium in the mallow family Malvaceae. The fiber is almost pure ce
Cotton ready for harvest in Andhra Pradesh, India.
Cotton plants as imagined and drawn by John Mandeville in the 14th century
The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
A woman in Dhaka clad in fine Bengali muslin, 18th century
Cotton gin
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A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. The separated seed
Cotton
…and dated to the sixth millennium BC, have been found at Mehrgarh, Kachi, Pakistan. Although cultivated since antiquity, it was the invention of the cotton gin that lowered the cost of production and led to its widespread use, and it is the most widely used natural fiber cloth in clothing today. Current estimates…
Model of a 19th-century cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut
Cotton before and after ginning.
A cotton boll. Each boll contains several dozen seeds.
An Indian woman ginning cotton c. 1815–20