The motion pieces are among Gachot’s most engaging works. Typically, turning a crank activates all the components. The theme of “industry” invites pieces where multiple figures toil in action and machines with moving parts convey the very American spirit of industrial production. This ideal of delirious movement comes to definitive fruition in the artist’s industry series. The inaugural work, The First Cotton Gin: The One That Didn’t Work (Industry #1), 1984, exemplifies Gachot’s experimentation with a multiplicity of forms and action. Here one figure climbs a ladder to pour raw cotton into a machine that ostensibly converts it, via a series of connected moving parts, into the finished product. A crank and crankcase, probably from a knife sharpener, puts the piece into motion. Man and machine come to life. Yet for all the din and clamor, not much happens. Part of the legend of the cotton gin is that the first one didn’t work.

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— Franklin Hill Perrell, from "Richard Gachot: An American Original"