554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1937 



description, copied in longhand into the volume in 1841, is identical 

 with that pubUshed by Tompkins from the Georgia Circuit Court 

 records and certified by James Madison on April 27, 1804." The 

 Patent Office record on pages 85 to 93, however, is plainly labeled: 

 "Not patented," and this description, evidently for this reason, seems 

 never to have been referred to before. In the opinion of the \mter, 

 both documents, as restored, are necessary to complete the restoration 

 of the Whitney patent of March 14, 1794. When these two docu- 

 ments are taken together, the long description and drawings declared 

 before Notary Goodrich, and supplementing the condensed descrip- 

 tion filed with the patent grant itself, it will be seen that the "several 

 modes of making the various parts of this machine * * * pointed 

 out and explained in a description with drawings," wliich so puzzled 

 Tompkins, are undoubtedly the alternatives given in the long descrip- 

 tion and applied only to the fonnation of the breastwork and brush 

 cylinder. 



WilUam Scarborough, of Georgia, in his sketch of the Ufe of the late 

 Eli Wliitney, pubhshcd in 1832, gives a clear description of the 

 cylinder, the piincipal part of ^Miitney's machine. He begins his 

 account of Wliitney's activities with the following paragraph: 



The details which follow are wholly derived from memory unassisted by note or 

 memorandum of any kind; but they will be found substantially correct. That 

 which took place anterior to May 1799, when the first of Mr. Whitney's gins was 

 put in operation was derived from a much esteemed and lamented friend,'* who 

 was the family physician and intimate friend of Mr. Phineas Miller, and that of 

 subsequent date occurred under the eye, or to the knowledge of the writer of 

 this sketch." 



In telling of Wliitney's very first trial model, Mr. Scarborough says: 



It consisted of a wooden cylinder, similar to the barrel of an organ, with bent 

 teeth inserted in straight rows, between which thin slats of iron were placed form- 

 ing narrow grooves through which the teeth on the cylinder could revolve thereby 

 tearing off the cotton from the seed, which dropped below. 



Scarborough continues \\'ith the story of Wliitney's experiments 

 on the Greene plantation, and again mentions the details of the cyl- 

 inder. 



Mr. Whitney proceeded to the North to have more perfect models prepared, 

 and to secure the patent right in the names of Miller and Whitney, which was 

 accordingly done. The experiment was there renewed with different cylinders, 

 the one with the bent teeth before described, and the other with the annular saws 

 as Mr. Whitney so termed them. His friends, among the number of whom was 

 Mr. Hillhouse, (United States Senator from Connecticut), seemed to be of the 

 opinion that the cotton ginned by the former (the bent teeth) had a better appear- 

 ance than that ginned by the latter. The first large gin set into operation by horse- 

 power was accordingly made with the bent teeth; and if the writer of this sketch 



'• Tompkins, D. A., Cotton and cotton oil, pp. 444-462, 1901. 



" Dr. Lemuel Kollock. 



" Southern Agriculturist, vol. 5, p. 398, August 1832. 



