Whitney's cotton gin model was capable of cleaning of lint per day. The model consisted of a wooden cylinder covered by rows of slender wires which caught the fibers of the cotton balls. Each row of wires then passed through the bars of a comb-like grid, pulling the cotton fibers through the grid as they did.Harr, M. E. (1977). Mechanics of particulate media: A probabilistic approach. McGraw-Hill. The comb-like teeth of the grids were closely spaced, preventing the seeds, fragments of the hard dried calyx of the original cotton flower, or sticks and other debris attached to the fibers from passing through. A series of brushes on a second rotating cylinder then brushed the now-cleaned fibers loose from the wires, preventing the mechanism from jamming.
