Whitney, E
ACHIEVEMENT(S): The cotton gin
DATE/PLACE OF BIRTH: 8th December 1765, in Westborough, MA.
DATE/PLACE/AGE AT DEATH: 8th January 1825, in New Haven, MA Aged 60.
DISCIPLINE: Invention.
FIELD: Engineering.
EDUCATION: Leicester College, Massachusetts; Yale College.
MAJOR WORK: The cotton gin and modern industrial machinery.
LIFE AND TIMES: Whitney, a talented lathe turner who wanted to achieve more, took a job as a teacher to support himself through Leicester College and then went to Yale in March 1789. After graduating, he travelled south to take a tutoring job and stopped on the way at a cotton plantation owned by Catherine Greene*, the widow of General Nathaniel Greene.
At that time, large tracts of land were unsuitable for growing long-staple cotton, but they could produce the unprofitable green-seed or short-staple cotton, in abundance. To separate the seed from short-staple cotton was very labour-intensive, so Whitney designed the cotton gin to clean out the seeds. The machine operated a toothed cylinder which picked up the cotton and forced it through a comb which removed the teeth.
By April 1793, the cotton gin had been improved to the extent that one worker could clean fifty pounds of cotton a day. This in effect strengthened the Southern economy and entrenched the slavery system that would be the cause of the Civil War. By 1795, cotton exports from the United States increased forty times over the previous year, but the cotton gin had been widely copied, so Whitney gained little profit.
With a possible war with France looming, America urgently needed muskets. The skilled labour required for this kind of work was unavailable, so Whitney turned his attention to armaments and, in 1798, he proposed to the government that he manufacture ten thousand weapons.
His friend, Oliver Wolcott, then Secretary of the Treasury, arranged a contract based on Whitney’s proposal to manufacture interchangeable parts. He developed the machinery needed to produce the parts, which could be operated by unskilled workmen. Jefferson* provided support and was influential in spreading Whitney’s concept throughout American manufacturing.
Once the initial problems had been solved, Whitney was able to develop even more efficient production techniques. In 1812, he took another contract with the government, to produce fifteen thousand weapons and a similar one with the State of New York.
ASSESSMENT: Whitney became one of the most celebrated inventors of the United States.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: His interchangeable-parts concept related to the work of lathe-maker Blanchard*, sewing-machine maker Singer*, clock-makers Chauncey Jerome* and Eli Terry*, as well as gun-makers Colt* and Simeon North*.
ONELINER: Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Constance McL. Green, Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology, Little, Brown and Company, Boston and Toronto, 1956.
PARENTS: Eli Whitney and Elizabeth Fay.
SIBLINGS: Elizabeth, Josiah and Benjamin.
SPOUSE: Henrietta Frances Edwards.
CHILDREN: Eli Jr., Elizabeth Fay, Frances and Susan.