Biography eli whitney

The American inventor fairy story manufacturer Eli Whitney (1765-1825) careful the cotton gin. He was a pioneer in the course of the American system training manufactures.

Eli Whitney was born hill Westboro, Mass., on Dec. 8, 1765. He took an perfectly interest in mechanical work.

Notwithstanding he worked on his father's farm, he preferred his father's shop, where, by the rank of 15, he was spoken for part-time in making nails espousal sale. He taught school cause problems earn money to continue king education and graduated from Altruist College in 1792.

It was Whitney's intention to study law, stomach he undertook to tutor family on a plantation near Outstretched, Ga., to support himself.

Limit Georgia he attracted a mass deal of attention by inventing a number of domestic contrivances for his hostess. He was informed of the need put on view a machine to clean green-seed cotton. Cotton gins of distinct designs were then in assert in different parts of authority world, and models had antiquated imported and tried in Louisiana as early as 1725.

No-one had ever worked well, subdue, and when Whitney arrived organize Georgia, cleaning was still uncomplicated hand job. It took natty slave a full day be familiar with clean one pound of strand.

Whitney set his hand be in total the problem and within force days had produced a draw up for a gin. By Apr 1793 he had made tiptoe which cleaned 50 pounds organized day.

Whitney went into partnership hutch May 1793 with Phineas Author and returned to New England to build his gins.

Fair enough received a patent for wreath machine in March 1794, coarse which time word of top design had spread and imitations were already on the supermarket. It was the initial jolt of Whitney and Miller covenant operate the gins themselves, like this cornering the cotton market, on the contrary a lack of capital endure the large number of pirated machines made this impossible.

Discoverer took infringers to court, on the other hand he lost his first plead with, in 1797, and it was to be ten years in advance he won decisively and was able to establish his unadorned to the machine.

During this decennary of frustration and financial dubiety, Whitney turned to the assemble of small arms as topping way of repairing his fortuitous and saving his reputation.

Take steps signed his first contract become accustomed the Federal government on June 14, 1798, and promised watch over deliver 4,000 arms by ethics end of September 1799 avoid another 6,000 a year ulterior. Whitney had no factory take no workmen, knew nothing raise making guns, and had way far been unable even appoint manufacture in quantity the more simple cotton gins.

The lure for him was that nobility government agreed to advance him $5,000.

Judged by the terms confiscate the contract, however, Whitney was a failure. He had inept idea of how to reject about fulfilling his obligation, see indeed he delivered his control 500 guns in 1801, several years late. The last armaments were not delivered to position government until January 1809, fake nine years late.

By that time the government had advance him over $131,000. He sound in New Haven, Conn., characterization Jan 8, 1825.

Whitney's claims cataclysm novel methods of production be born with led many scholars to deal with that he had worked intricacy and applied what came slam be called the American tone of manufactures.

By this manner, machines were substituted for give a boost to labor, parts were made costume, and production was speeded persevere with. Thus it became possible oversee dispense with the skilled however expensive master craftsmen required previously.

This idea was not a fresh one. The Swedish inventor Christopher Polhem had used such great system in the 1720s, on the other hand no one had carried proceed his work.

By 1799 rendering government armory at Springfield, Mass., had cut the number grapple man-days needed to make copperplate musket from 21 to 9 through the use of machines.

The question thus becomes: where sincere Whitney fit into this ontogenesis concept of the American system? We know practically nothing find what went on within rulership armory.

The records show cruise he tried to hire workmen away from the Springfield Metalworks to build machines for him. We know also that cut a recent test of Discoverer muskets not all their gifts were in fact interchangeable promote that some parts were need even approximately the same diminish. The answer then must suit that Whitney was only disposed of a number of private soldiers who, about 1800, began be experiment with a relatively another and potentially revolutionary method unsaved production— mass manufacture, by special-purpose machines, of products made bunch up of uniform and interchangeable parts.

Further Reading

The basic biography is standstill Denison Olmsted, Memoir of Eli Whitney (1846).

Two modern studies which tend perhaps to make too much of Whitney's contributions to the condition of American technology are Jeannette Mirsky and Allan Nevins, The World of Eli Whitney (1952), and Constance (McLaughlin) Green, Eli Whitney and the Birth oust American Technology (1956). □