The invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the way cotton was produced in the United States. Although it was considered a genius invention at the time, the company responsible for selling the cotton ginning service ran into major financial problems over the years. The failure of Eli Whitney and Phineas Miller's cotton ginning business was the result of overextending obligations, patent infringement, and success beyond belief. While machines made to remove the seeds from long-staple cotton have been around for over 1,500 years, Eli Whitney's operation the cotton gin was the first to separate the seeds from the fibers of short-staple cotton. Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts in 1765 and grew up to have great mechanical skills. Growing up, young Eli Whitney built several things and even started a nail manufacturing business during the American Revolution when he was only fourteen. After the war, the nail business declined, so he and his assistant began making pins. He knew how to adapt to changes in the market of his sector (Huff 12). As he grew up, he began teaching at a grammar school in 1783 until he began attending Yale College in 1789 (Carlson). Later in his career, he pioneered the use of interchangeable parts in firearms manufacturing. The government commissioned him to produce 10,000 muskets in 1798, and then another 15,000 muskets in 1812. Before the advent of Eli Whitney's cotton gin, plantations in the antebellum South experimented with several harvests in an attempt to gain wealth, but nothing seemed work. The climate was too hot for tobacco, but not hot enough for sugarcane (Huff 36). Both long-staple and short-staple cotton were tried, but found to be incapable of carrying out the professional lives they would experience at home. The nation soon divided between the rural farmers of the South and the industrial workers of the North. These cultural differences between the North and South of the United States would eventually lead to the Civil War (Huff 64). Although the cotton gin did not bring Eli Whitney much money, he was still a successful inventor and manufacturer until he died in 1825 at the age of 59. The invention of the cotton gin revolutionized the way cotton was produced in the antebellum South and helped the textile industry flourish in New England. It goes without saying that the cotton gin is perhaps the most influential invention of the 19th century, making cotton the South's primary cash crop, necessitating more slave labor on Southern plantations, and indirectly causing the American Civil War..