Gin The National Jenever Museums are located in Hasselt, Belgium, and Schiedam, the Netherlands. The name "gin" is a shortened form of the older English word "genever", related to the French word "genièvre" and the Dutch word "jenever". All ultimately derive from "juniperus", the Latin for juniper. Although several different styles of gin have evolved, it is legally differentiated into four categories in the European Union, which are described as follows. In the EU, the minimum bottled alcoholic strength for gin, distilled gin, and London gin is 37.5 per cent ABV. In the United States, gin is defined as an alcoholic
Cotton gin a day. The McCarthy gin used a reciprocating knife to detach seed from the lint. Vibration caused by the reciprocating motion limited the speed at which the gin could operate. In the middle of the 20th Century gins using a rotating blade replaced ones using a reciprocating blade. These descendants of the McCarthy gin are the only gins now used for extra-long staple cotton in the United States. Prior to the introduction of the mechanical cotton gin, cotton had required considerable labor to clean and separate the fibers from the seeds. With Eli Whitney’s gin, cotton became a tremendously profitable