On $5 bills Abraham Lincoln is on one side and the Lincoln memorial is on the other side.
The introduction of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney had a great effect on the plantations, as well as slavery. Before the cotton gin was invented, the production of cotton was a… painstaking business. To remove the cotton fiber from the seeds took a great amount of time.
Newbold Plow - cast iron plow by Charles Newbold
The Newbold Plow
The plow evolved from the all-wood designs of antiquity, to the use of iron parts. In 1720, the first English patent for a wooden moldboard sheathed with iron was issued to Joseph Foljambe. From that the evolution to plows made with cast iron moldboards and shares occurred in Scotland in 1785 by James Small. These cast iron plows were then imported to the U.S.
Charles Newbold, born in Chesterfield, NJ (1780), spent his teenage years investigating the use of cast iron to improve on the heavy iron-clad wooden plow then available. He was issued the first US patent for a plow on 26 Jun 1797. The plow was cast as one piece—the moldboard, share, and land-side all cast together—with wooden handles and beam added.
The westward expansion came together with the development of technologies that created modern work environment that we see today. This require a lot of people to be self-capable to survive in such working environment.
This situation really reflect the iconic American ideal of self-reliant individuals that we see in our society today.
