Eli Whitney
Elias Whitney was an
American inventor and manufacturer.
Encyclopedia
Elias Whitney was an
American inventor and manufacturer.
Biography
Born on December 8, 1765 in
Westborough,
Massachusetts, the son of a farmer, Whitney graduated from
Yale College in 1792, where he was elected to
Phi Beta Kappa. On January 6, 1817 he married Henrietta Edwards; they had four children. He died at
New Haven,
Connecticut,
United States on January 8, 1825.
Invention and innovation
Cotton gin
Whitney is credited with creating the first
cotton gin in 1793 . His business partner was Phineas Miller. The
cotton gin is a mechanical device which removed the seeds from
cotton, a process which until that time had been extremely labor-intensive. The
cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks. As it turned, the hooks pulled the
cotton fibers through a mesh. The seeds would not fit through the mesh and fell outside. The
cotton gin could generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily. This contributed to the economic development of the Southern states of the United States, a prime
cotton growing area; some historians believe that this invention allowed for the African slavery system in the Southern United States to become more sustainable at a critical point in its development.
Whitney received a
patent for his
cotton gin on March 14, 1794, however, it was not validated until 1807. Whitney and Miller charged farmers an expensive price for doing the ginning for them. Two-fifths of the profits paid in cotton. Farmers were not happy with this fee. While his ideas were innovative and useful, they reproduced so easily that the concepts and designs were readily duplicated by others, claiming this was their new invention. Whitney's company that produced cotton gins went out of business in 1797.
Other Inventions
In 1798 Whitney invented a way to manufacture
muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable. With this invention of manufacturing
muskets, Eli Whitney became rich. Whitney received a government contract to make 10,000
muskets. The concept of interchangeable parts – identical components of a larger mechanism that could easily be swapped or replaced – actually had longer lasting effects than the
cotton gin, in large part enabling the boom of cheap mass production that began in the late nineteenth century. However, the use of interchangeable parts in
gun manufacture actually predates Whitney; the
French military used such a system in the final years of the Ancien Régime.
It is said that that Eli Whitney’s greatest contribution to the American Industry was the development and implementation of the American System of manufacturing and the
assembly line, which he was the first to use while he was producing
muskets for the
U.S. Government.
The Eli Whitney Museum is now housed in his former musket factory.
External links
- from
- on the website.
- website.
