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Eli Whitney
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The realization that Eli Whitney was among the most important Americans at the start of the republic has come only gradually to historians, even historians of technology. Today it is clear that his most famous invention, the cotton gin, saved the United States South economically while encouraging the slave and plantation systems that ultimately led to the Civil War. Yet it is likely that the gin, a simple device that Whitney made in a few days, would have been invented by someone else as well. Whitney's true worth came from the invention of the "American system" of manufacture and the creation of specialized tools. He ... was the first American to utilize standardized parts, an idea probably originally owed to Leblanc, a French arms manufacturer. Whitney's development of cost accounting and establishment of stable government contracts originated methods still used for successful manufacture of all sorts.
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The inventor of the COTTON GIN and a pioneer in the use of mass production methods, Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Mass., on Dec. 8, 1765, and died on Jan. 8, 1825. He graduated from Yale College in 1792 and by April 1793 had designed and constructed a machine called a cotton gin that quickly and easily separated cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. Whitney's cotton gin was capable of maintaining a daily output of 23 kg (50 lb) of cleaned cotton, and its effect was far-reaching, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the first time. Whitney... failed to profit from his invention. Numerous imitations appeared, and his 1794 patent was not validated until 1807.
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While Eli Whitney worked out his plans at Whitneyville, Simeon North, another Connecticut mechanic and a gunmaker by trade, adopted the same system. Simeon North's first shop was at Berlin. He afterwards moved to Middletown. Like Eli Whitney, he used methods far in advance of the time. Both Eli Whitney and Simeon North helped to establish the United States Arsenals at Springfield, Massachusetts, and at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in which their methods were adopted. Both the Whitney and North plants survived their founders.
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Born in 1764, Eli Whitney grew up on a farm in Westborough, Massachusetts. He demonstrated mechanical aptitude from an early age. By his early teens, he was already a skilled blacksmith. When the Revolutionary War caused a shortage of nails, he showed that he ... had an entrepreneurial spirit. He began specializing in nails, developed a nail-making machine, and then diversified into hat pins. Eli Whitney was still a teenager when he became the New World's sole manufacturer of hat pins.
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Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765. After graduation from Yale College in 1792, Whitney spent a year in Georgia where he designed and tested a model cotton gin and formed a partnership with Phineas Miller to gin and sell cotton. Though his invention revolutionized agriculture in the South, Whitney received practically no financial return for his invention. Whitney returned to New Haven in 1794 and in 1798 began manufacturing firearms under contract to the federal government. In his factory, Whitney developed a manufacturing system based on the production of interchangeable parts. Whitney married Henrietta Frances Edwards in 1817.
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Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Mass., on Dec. 8, 1765. He took an early interest in mechanical work. Although he worked on his father's farm, he preferred his father's shop, where, by the age of 15, he was engaged part-time in making nails for sale. He taught school to earn money to continue his education and graduated from Yale College in 1792.
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Eli Whitney