10. The Cotton Gin, the first phase of production manufacturing
When Eli Whitney devised a method of separating cotton seed from lint in 1793, one of the most labor-intensive aspects of cotton production was mechanized, and an industry was revolutionized. A cotton gin is merely a device that uses hooks to drag raw cotton through a series of mesh screens to separate lint from seed. Before this, the process was undertaken by hand, which, of course, was both labor and time intensive.
The revolutionary effect of the cotton to gin was to massively increase the profitability of cotton, which resulted in a massive increase in acreage, and a steep rise in the price of slaves. On the other side of the world, however, as the machine came into common use in industrial England, it had the same effect of hugely increasing cotton production in India, where the British Empire sourced most of its cotton. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, mechanized cotton production was feeding into mechanized weaving.
The whole business of cloth production revolutionized the industry, but also industry in general, and it would probably be fair to say that the conversion of cotton into linen was the first intensively mechanized production system of the Industrial Revolution.