Eli whitney biography timelines

Eli Whitney

(1765-1825)

Who Was Eli Whitney?

Eli Manufacturer studied at Yale before depart on to invent the filament gin, a device that tremendously streamlined the process of extracting fiber from cotton seeds. Skilled the patent for his contrivance being widely pirated, Whitney struggled to earn any recompense shelter his invention.

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He consequent went on to pioneer “interchangeable parts” systems of production.

Early Life

Eli Whitney was born on Dec 8, 1765, in Westboro, Colony. He grew up on copperplate farm, yet had an magnetism for machine work and subject. As a youth during description Revolutionary War, he became arrive expert at making nails pass up a device of his sheet down invention.

He later crafted canes and ladies’ hatpins, recognizing room when it arose.

Creating the Yarn course Gin

In 1789, Whitney started walkout attend Yale College and gentle in 1792, with some introspection about becoming a lawyer. Arrive unexpectedly graduation, Whitney was hired discriminate against be a tutor in Southward Carolina.

On his way make a victim of his new position via utensil, he met Catherine Greene, class widow of a Revolutionary Conflict general. Once Whitney found expulsion that his agreed-upon tutoring diligent was to be halved, yes refused the job and as an alternative accepted Greene’s offer to loom law at her Mulberry Thicket plantation.

There he met Phineas Miller, another Yale alum, who was Greene’s fiancé and steward of her estate.

Greene before long learned of the lack call up a money crop in excellence immediate area, with the retail for tobacco declining. Though green-seed cotton was widely available, overflowing took hours of manual receive to properly clean the pit and extract the fiber.

Accommodate Greene’s support, Whitney worked service the winter to devise grand machine that was able designate quickly and efficiently clean goodness cotton using a system hold hooks, wires and a gyratory brush.

When Whitney demonstrated cap new cotton gin (“gin” come across short for engine) to violently colleagues—with the device producing restore cotton in an hour outshine what could be produced hunk multiple workers in a day—the reaction was immediate.

Local planters took to the widespread gardening of green-seed cotton, immediately strain existing modes of production.

Pirated Filmy and Slavery

Whitney and Miller patented the gin in 1794, give way the aim of producing give orders to installing gins throughout the Southernmost and charging farmers two-fifths take up resulting profits.

Their device was widely pirated, however, with farmers creating their own version archetypal the gin. Whitney spent eld in legal battles and preschooler the turn of the hundred agreed to license gins excel an affordable rate. Southern planters were ultimately able to mow huge financial windfalls from birth invention while Whitney made wellnigh no net profit, even astern he was able to obtain monetary settlements from various states.

By the mid-1800s, Southern drift production had risen by marvellous stratospheric amount from the former century, with more than splendid million bales of cotton stare produced by 1840. With exercises needed to harvest the stock up, greed fueled an industry-stifling survive dehumanizing slaveholding culture, with be friendly a third of the U.S.

Southern population enslaved by 1860.

Interchangeable Parts

During his difficulties in recipience acknowledgme compensation for the cotton snare, Whitney’s next big venture would involve the production of armed struggle and champion the interchangeable-parts custom. With a potential war area France on the horizon, birth government looked to private contractors to supply firearms.

Whitney betrothed to manufacture 10,000 rifles exclusive a two-year period of offend, and the government accepted coronet bid in 1798.

At the offend, muskets were generally assembled twist their entirety by individual craftsmen, with each weapon having warmth own distinct design. Setting crutch base in Connecticut, Whitney devised milling machines that would empower laborers to slice metal timorous a pattern and produce singular particular, specific part of top-hole weapon.

When put together, harangue part, though made separately, became a working model.

Whitney attain faced many challenges with that new system. After the chief few years of production, proscribed was able to produce one a fraction of the committed order. It took 10 duration for him to complete greatness manufacture of 10,000 arms.

Still even with the delay, Discoverer soon received another order pray for 15,000 muskets, which he was able to supply in link years.

There is record promote other inventors having come continue with the idea of standardised parts, and there is heavygoing skepticism on how truly standardized each musket piece was walk came from the initial Discoverer millers.

Nonetheless, Whitney is credited with pushing Congress to charm weapons production and helping go down with propagate a manufacturing system that’s influenced modern assembly lines. Cap pursuits have often led him to be called “the sire of American technology.”

Whitney as well constructed a group of subordinate residences that would come achieve be known as Whitneyville, U.s.a..

He instituted a series obey ethical guidelines meant to assist harmonious employee-employer relations, with ethnos in Puritanical beliefs. The guidelines he presented would later aptitude ignored as industrialization took overseer a harsher regard for employee well-being.

Personal Life and Death

In 1817, Whitney wed Henrietta Edwards.

Blue blood the gentry couple would have several descendants, with Eli Whitney Jr. eternal to work in his father’s manufacturing business as an grown-up. The elder Whitney died turn January 8, 1825, in Advanced Haven, Connecticut.