CottonFirst people to cultivate cotton: a prehistoric community that lived in the Indus River valley in modern-day Pakistan, China, and India around 4000 B.C.During the Middle Ages in Europe, people knew that imported cotton came from a plant, but they didn’t know what the plant looked like. Some believed the plants “grew” lamblike animals that produced the fiber.The first recorded cotton crop in the United States was in Florida in 1556. Virginia followed in 1607.The world uses more cotton today than any other type of fiber.After the invention of the cotton gin in the 1790s, the U.S. cotton crop doubled. By 1850, the United States was growing 75 percent of the world’s cotton.The first machine-woven cotton cloth was made in England in 1730.The United States produces nearly 21 million 500-pound bales of cotton each year, nearly twice the production of 1950.Cotton’s quality is based on three things: color, purity, and fiber strength.During the American Revolution, the British and French were cut off from cheap American cotton, so they bought the fiber from Egypt instead.
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