H4c - Tech in Georgia

Watch the video session and fill in your digital interactive notebook

With the creation of the cotton gin, a few things blew up.  First, the need for slaves increased greatly. Slaves were needed to grow the cotton and to pick the cotton.  Second, we needed more cotton. The cotton gin increased the speed that cotton was cleaned. So now that we can quickly clean the cotton, we needed more cotton!! 

About 1793, tobacco was the cash crop of Georgia. It was doing serious damage to the soil, so farmers were looking for another crop to help. In steps the cotton crop.  The biggest issue of the time was cleaning the cotton quickly, Eli Whitney came up with the idea of the cotton gin. 

Due to the amount of cotton we were producing Georgia was called King Cotton! 

Another technological development was the railroads. Railroads helped transport the cotton that we were growing. 

Many towns, including Atlanta were created because of railroad. Actually, Atlanta was built at a location with no river for transportation. By the 1850's, so many railroad tracks went across the state that Georgia ranked in the top ten for railroad track. 

Remember, Atlanta was originally called Terminus, which means end of the line. Atlanta earned the nickname Gate City because of the railroads. It was kinda the Gateway to the south.