Eli Whitney
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Elias (Eli) Whitney (December 8, 1765, Westborough, Massachusetts – January 8, 1825, New Haven, Connecticut) was an American manufacturer. The son of a farmer, Whitney graduated from Yale College in 1792, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He married Henrietta Edwards on January 6, 1817 and they had four children.
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[edit] Early Years
The oldest of four siblings, Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765. He cared for his younger siblings very much and carried his concern for them to his adult life. His parents noticed that he was somewhat slow when learning to read, but he was very good at figures. Eli was also very intellectual for his young age and his dexterity was also exceptional. He loved to work in his father’s workshop where one day while his family was gone, he took apart his father’s watch and put it back together before his family returned. Even though he was more interested in building things in the shop rather than farm work, he was assigned chores such as helping get hay in the summer. Eli’s father was very close to his children, especially after Eli’s mother died. His father remarried when Eli was fourteen. None of the children were very fond of their stepmother and she did not respect or believe in Eli‘s talent. Their stepmother was very proud of a case of knives she owned. When one of her knives broke Eli made an exact replica of it and his stepmother no longer undermined his gift. When the Revolutionary War began his father allowed him to make nails and many other tools. He then had the idea of finding an assistant. He swore his sister to secrecy and went off on a three day journey to find someone to help him in his shop. He found a man and brought him back to the farm. His father disapproved of his journey , but was pleased with the outcome. The man Eli hired worked in the shop for three months and their profits increased. Eli visited many shops and learned many things from the tradesmen who owned them. They let Eli in on their “trade secrets” because they thought he was too young to be a competitor. This knowledge may have helped him in the invention of his famous Cotton Gin.
Green, Constance McL. Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology. Canada: Little, Brown and Company, 1956
[edit] Invention and innovation
[edit] Cotton gin
Although Whitney is credited with the first patent on a cotton gin in 1793, the most likely first inventor was Henry Ogden Holmes. Whitney's business partner was Phineas Miller. The cotton gin is a mechanical device which removes 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, which pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton 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 (later numbered as X72) 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 cotton gin company went out of business in 1797.
[edit] Other Inventions
Although Whitney is popularly credited with the invention of a musket that could be manufactured with interchangeable parts, the idea predates him and he never succeeded at it. The idea is credited to Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, a French artillerist, and credit for finally perfecting the "armory system", or American system of manufacturing, is given to Captain John H. Hall. In From the American System to Mass Production, historian David Hounshell describes how de Gribeauval's idea propagated from France to the colonies via two routes: from Honoré Blanc via his friend Thomas Jefferson, and via Major Louis de Tousard, another French artillerist who was instrumental in establishing West Point, teaching the young officer corps of the Continental Army, and in establishing the armories at Springfield and Harper's Ferry.
Whitney, who was not doing well with his cotton gin business, obtained a contract in January, 1798 to deliver ten to fifteen thousand muskets in 1800. He had not mentioned interchangeability at that time. Ten months later, Treasury Secretary Wolcott sent him a "foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques", possibly one of Blanc's reports, after which Whitney first began to talk about interchangeability. After spending most of 1799-1801 in cotton gin litigation, Whitney began promoting the idea of interchangeability, and even arranged a public demonstration of the concept in order to gain time. He did not deliver on the contract until 1809, but then spent the rest of his life publicizing the idea of interchangeability. (Hounshell, pp 30-32)
The Eli Whitney Museum is now housed in his former musket factory.
[edit] Reference
Hounshell, David A. (1984). From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-3158-X.
[edit] External links
- The Eli Whitney Museum
- Essay CottonTimes.com
- Eli Whitney Biography on at Whitney Research Group
- About.com.
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Whitney, Eli |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | American inventor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 8, 1765 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Westborough, Massachusetts, United States |
| DATE OF DEATH | January 8, 1825 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | New Haven, Connecticut, United States |
