Isn't it true that Eli Whitney's slave, and not Whitney, invented the cotton gin?He said to his slave that he would give him his freedom if he made...

There is certainly no documented proof that a slave invented the cotton gin that Eli Whitney is credited for having patented. It is possible that Whitney got the idea from a slave, or at least from a device that had previously been in use.

Whitney has been charged with borrowing the idea for the cotton gin from a simple comb like device that slaves used to clean the cotton. Whitney is said to have merely enlarged upon the idea of the comb to create the cotton gin, which works very much like an oversized comb culling the seeds and debris from the cotton. So, while historians have accepted the theory that Eli Whitney's cotton gin idea came from an African slave, this claim remains impossible to prove. The Cotton Gin patent # is 72X.

Under American law, slaves were not allowed to patent a device under their own name.

Whitney also received assistance from his partner, Phineas Miller, as well as financial support from his employer, Catherine Green. According to one source, Whitney spent several months in near seclusion working on the project.