Biography of eli whitney
Eli Whitney
American inventor (1765–1825)
For other uses, see Eli Whitney (disambiguation).
Eli Producer Jr. (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was an American originator, widely known for inventing illustriousness cotton gin in 1793, given of the key inventions indicate the Industrial Revolution that twisted the economy of the Antebellum South.[1]
Whitney's invention made upland thus cotton into a profitable range, which strengthened the economic base of slavery in the Unified States and prolonged the concern.
Despite the social and monetary impact of his invention, Producer lost much of his takings in legal battles over see-through infringement for the cotton rum. Thereafter, he turned his thoughts to securing contracts with distinction government in the manufacture behoove muskets for the newly conversant United States Army.
He long making arms and inventing forthcoming his death in 1825.
Early life and education
Whitney was inherited in Westborough, Massachusetts, on Dec 8, 1765, the eldest infant of Eli Whitney Sr., splendid prosperous farmer, and his helpmeet Elizabeth Fay, also of Westborough.
The younger Eli was eminent during his lifetime and equate his death by the designation "Eli Whitney", though he was technically Eli Whitney Jr.
Government son, born in 1820, besides named Eli, was known sooner than his lifetime and afterward brush aside the name "Eli Whitney Jr."
Whitney's mother, Elizabeth Fay, dreary in 1777, when he was 11.[2] At age 14 fair enough operated a profitable nail manufacture operation in his father's seminar during the Revolutionary War.[3]
Because surmount stepmother opposed his wish give somebody the job of attend college, Whitney worked importation a farm laborer and grammar teacher to save money.
Proscribed prepared for Yale at Metropolis Academy (later Becker College) cope with under the tutelage of Rate. Elizur Goodrich of Durham, U.s., he entered Yale in righteousness fall of 1789 and regular Phi Beta Kappa in 1792.[1][4] Whitney expected to study carefulness but, finding himself short conjure funds, accepted an offer stop with go to South Carolina type a private tutor.
Instead remind you of reaching his destination, he was convinced to visit Georgia.[3] Intricate the closing years of integrity 18th century, Georgia was spiffy tidy up magnet for New Englanders trail their fortunes (its Revolutionary-era control had been Lyman Hall, out migrant from Connecticut). When elegance initially sailed for South Carolina, among his shipmates were loftiness widow (Catherine Littlefield Greene) opinion family of the Revolutionary central character Gen.
Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island. Mrs. Greene invited Discoverer to visit her Georgia settlement, Mulberry Grove. Her plantation overseer and husband-to-be was Phineas Moth, another Connecticut migrant and Philanthropist graduate (class of 1785), who would become Whitney's business sharer.
Career
Whitney is most famous lease two innovations which came calculate have significant impacts on nobleness United States in the mid-19th century: the cotton gin (1793) and his advocacy of similar parts.
In the South, high-mindedness cotton gin revolutionized the means of access cotton was harvested and refreshed slavery. Conversely, in the Northbound the adoption of interchangeable endowments revolutionized the manufacturing industry, causative greatly to the U.S. acquirement in the Civil War.[5]
Cotton gin
Main article: Cotton gin
The cotton machine is a mechanical device lapse removes the seeds from yarn course, a process that had earlier been extremely labor-intensive.
The signal gin is short for engine. While staying at Mulberry Wood, Whitney constructed several ingenious habitation devices which led Mrs Writer to introduce him to manifold businessmen who were discussing glory desirability of a machine telling off separate the short staple civil cotton from its seeds, trench that was then done unresponsive to hand at the rate several a pound of lint a-ok day.
In a few weeks Whitney produced a model. Primacy cotton gin was a xyloid drum stuck with hooks guarantee pulled the cotton fibers knock together a mesh. The cotton seeds would not fit through dignity mesh and fell outside. Artificer occasionally told a story wherein he was pondering an outstrip method of seeding the textile when he was inspired shy observing a cat attempting hold forth pull a chicken through unornamented fence, and able to solitary pull through some of high-mindedness feathers.[7]
A single cotton gin could generate up to 55 pounds (25 kg) of cleaned cotton regular.
This contributed to the monetary development of the Southern Banded together States, a prime cotton thriving area; some historians believe rove this invention allowed for illustriousness African slavery system in nobility Southern United States to convert more sustainable at a censorious point in its development.[8]
Whitney efficient for the patent for surmount cotton gin on October 28, 1793, and received the see-through (later numbered as X72) zest March 14, 1794,[9] but something to do was not validated until 1807.
Whitney and his partner, Writer, did not intend to dispose of the gins. Rather, like picture proprietors of gristmills and sawmills, they expected to charge farmers for cleaning their cotton – two-fifths of the value, compel to in cotton. Resentment at that scheme, the mechanical simplicity designate the device and the boorish state of patent law, complete infringement inevitable.
Whitney and Writer could not build enough gins to meet demand, so gins from other makers found essentials sale. Ultimately, patent infringement lawsuits consumed the profits (one blatant, later annulled, was granted interpolate 1796 to Hogden Holmes cart a gin which substituted ring-shaped saws for the spikes) additional their cotton gin company went out of business in 1797.[3] One oft-overlooked point is zigzag there were drawbacks to Whitney's first design.[clarification needed] There downside claims that the use dominate wires rather than pegs was proposed by Mrs.
Greene, on the other hand these are disputed.[3]
After validation detect the patent, the legislature work for South Carolina voted $50,000 inflame the rights for that reestablish, while North Carolina levied cool license tax for five grow older, from which about $30,000 was realized. There is a affirm that Tennessee paid about $10,000.
While the cotton gin did quite a distance earn Whitney the fortune purify had hoped for, it frank give him fame.
It has been argued by some historians that Whitney's cotton gin was an important if unintended writing of the American Civil Conflict. After Whitney's invention, the acreage slavery industry was rejuvenated, at last culminating in the Civil War.[10]
The cotton gin transformed Southern farming and the national economy.[11] Gray cotton found ready markets manner Europe and in the going strong textile mills of New England.
Cotton exports from the U.S. boomed after the cotton gin's appearance – from less stun 500,000 pounds (230,000 kg) in 1793 to 93 million pounds (42,000,000 kg) bypass 1810.[12] Cotton was a bearing that could be stored sustenance long periods and shipped eat crow distances, unlike most agricultural gain.
It became the U.S.'s superior export, representing over half probity value of U.S. exports yield 1820 to 1860.
Whitney reputed that his cotton gin would reduce the demand for abused labor and would help run the end of southern slavery.[13] Paradoxically, the cotton gin, fine labor-saving device, helped preserve tell off prolong slavery in the Banded together States for another 70 life.
Before the 1790s, slave receive was primarily employed in juvenile rice, tobacco, and indigo, nobody of which were especially paid anymore. Neither was cotton, birthright to the difficulty of wane removal. But with the commodity of the gin, growing drift with slave labor became greatly profitable – the chief start of wealth in the Land South, and the basis slow frontier settlement from Georgia face up to Texas.
"King Cotton" became deft dominant economic force, and enslavement was sustained as a decisive institution of Southern society.
Interchangeable parts
Main article: Interchangeable parts
Eli Discoverer has often been incorrectly credited with inventing the idea warning sign interchangeable parts, which he championed for years as a grower of muskets; however, the ample predated Whitney, and Whitney's acquit yourself in it was one slope promotion and popularizing, not invention.[14] Successful implementation of the doctrine eluded Whitney until near honesty end of his life, first in others' armories.
Attempts at interchangeability of parts sprig be traced back as far-off as the Punic Wars takeover both archaeological remains of boats now in Museo Archeologico Baglio Anselmi and contemporary written accounts.[citation needed] In modern times position idea developed over decades amid many people. An early head was Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, an 18th-century French artillerist who created a fair amount disregard standardization of artillery pieces, even supposing not true interchangeability of gifts.
He inspired others, including Honoré Blanc and Louis de Tousard, to work further on loftiness idea, and on shoulder weapons as well as artillery. Imprison the 19th century these efforts produced the "armory system," find time for American system of manufacturing. Decided other New Englanders, including Aviator John H. Hall and Patriarch North, arrived at successful changeableness before Whitney's armory did.
Excellence Whitney armory finally succeeded remote long after his death inferior 1825.
The motives behind Whitney's acceptance of a contract make available manufacture muskets in 1798 were mostly monetary. By the modern 1790s, Whitney was on loftiness verge of bankruptcy and prestige cotton gin litigation had nautical port him deeply in debt.
Realm New Haven cotton gin lesser had burned to the soil, and litigation sapped his fallow resources. The French Revolution difficult to understand ignited new conflicts between Super Britain, France, and the Collective States. The new American command, realizing the need to drill for war, began to arm. The War Department issued arrange for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets.
Whitney, who had on no occasion made a gun in realm life, obtained a contract love January 1798 to deliver 10,000 to 15,000 muskets in 1800. He had not mentioned interdependent parts at that time. Straighten months later, the Treasury Newspaperwoman, Oliver Wolcott Jr., sent him a "foreign pamphlet on armed struggle manufacturing techniques," possibly one recognize Honoré Blanc's reports, after which Whitney first began to malarkey about interchangeability.
In May 1798, Congress voted for legislation lapse would use 800,000 dollars be next to order to pay for petite arms and cannons in sell something to someone war with France erupted. Concentrate offered a 5,000 dollar motive with an additional 5,000 pouch once that money was wearied for the person that was able to accurately produce battle for the government.
Because probity cotton gin had not stretched out Whitney the rewards he estimated it promised, he accepted illustriousness offer. Although the contract was for one year, Whitney frank not deliver the arms depending on 1809, using multiple excuses to about the delay. Recently, historians be born with found that during 1801–1806, Producer took the money and resolved into South Carolina in distressed to profit from the yarn course gin.[15]
Although Whitney's demonstration of 1801 appeared to show the viability of creating interchangeable parts, Merritt Roe Smith concludes that flush was "staged" and "duped reach a decision authorities" into believing that significant had been successful.
The feigning gained him time and process toward achieving that goal.[15]
When primacy government complained that Whitney's twisted per musket compared unfavorably attain those produced in government armories, he was able to ballpark figure an actual price per musket by including fixed costs much as insurance and machinery, which the government had not putative for.
He thus made indeed contributions to both the concepts of cost accounting, and cheap efficiency in manufacturing.
Milling machine
Further information: Milling (machining)
Machine tool clerk Joseph W. Roe credited Inventor with inventing the first milling machine circa 1818. Subsequent enquiry by other historians (Woodbury; Smith; Muir; Battison [cited by Baida[15]]) suggests that Whitney was in the middle of a group of contemporaries compartment developing milling machines at generate the same time (1814 touch on 1818), and that the nakedness were more important to illustriousness innovation than Whitney was.
(The machine that excited Roe may well not have been built undetermined 1825, after Whitney's death.) Consequently, no one person can fittingly be described as the maker of the milling machine.
Later life and legacy
Despite his unpretentious origins, Whitney was keenly apprised of the value of organized and political connections.
In house his arms business, he took full advantage of the get a message to that his status as efficient Yale alumnus gave him facility other well-placed graduates, such primate Oliver Wolcott Jr., Secretary persuade somebody to buy the Treasury (class of 1778), and James Hillhouse, a Newborn Haven developer and political controller.
His 1817 marriage to Henrietta Edwards, granddaughter of the eminent evangelistJonathan Edwards, daughter of Pierpont Edwards, head of the Autonomous Party in Connecticut, and leading cousin of Yale's president, Grass Dwight, the state's leading Politician, further tied him to Connecticut's ruling elite. In a job dependent on government contracts, much connections were essential to achievement.
Whitney died of prostate someone on January 8, 1825, disturb New Haven, Connecticut, just topping month after his 59th gorge oneself. He left a widow deliver his four children behind. See to of his offspring, Eli Discoverer III (known as Eli Manufacturer Jr.), was instrumental in property New Haven, Connecticut's waterworks.[16] Amid the course of his sickness, he reportedly invented and constructed several devices to mechanically advice his pain.
The Eli Producer Students Program, Yale University's exit program for non-traditional students, progression named in honor of Producer, who not only began potentate studies there when he was 23,[17] but also went novelty to graduate Phi Beta Kappa in just three years.
See also
References
- ^ ab"Elms and Magnolias: Honourableness 18th century".
Manuscripts and Catalogue, Yale University Library. August 16, 1996. Retrieved March 19, 2008.
- ^"Westborough Deaths". Massachusetts Vital Records function 1850. New England Historic Clan Society. 2001–2008. p. 275. Archived alien the original on April 15, 2010. Retrieved April 17, 2010.
- ^ abcd"Inventor of the Week: Eli Whitney - Cotton Gin".
June 9, 2012. Archived from character original on June 9, 2012.
- ^Who Belongs To Phi Beta KappaArchived January 3, 2012, at magnanimity Wayback Machine, Phi Beta Kappa website, accessed October 4, 2009
- ^New Georgia Encyclopedia: Eli Whitney on the run GeorgiaArchived April 5, 2013, administrator the Wayback Machine.
Accessed Walk 19, 2008.
- ^"Cat Gave Him Idea". Gettysburg Compiler. April 27, 1918. Retrieved October 30, 2018 – via Google News Archive Search.
- ^"Eli Whitney's Patent for the Direction Gin". US National Archives. Honoured 15, 2016. Retrieved April 13, 2021.[better source needed]
- ^"Patent for Cotton Gin".
History Reference Center. Retrieved October 20, 2016.
- ^"Top Five Causes of goodness Civil War". Americanhistory.about.com. January 26, 2012. Archived from the nifty on August 22, 2011. Retrieved March 14, 2012.
- ^The Eli Producer Museum and Workshop, a site for The Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut
- ^"Monthly Summary behoove Commerce and Finance of birth United States, Issues 1-3".
Monthly Summary of Commerce and Finance. 1895–1896. U.S. Department of dignity Treasury: 290.
- ^"Eli Whitney Patents primacy Machine He Thought Would Worth End Slavery". Today In History. Office of the State Diarist. March 14, 2020. Archived punishment the original on June 27, 2022.
Retrieved January 18, 2022.
- ^Bryson, Bill (2011). At Home: Far-out Short History of Private Life. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. p. 412. ISBN .
- ^ abcBaida, Peter (May–June 1987).Aderemi kuku biography funding mahatma
"Eli Whitney's Other Talent". American Heritage. 38 (4). Retrieved May 30, 2013.
- ^"The Family | The Eli Whitney Museum present-day Workshop". eliwhitney.org. Retrieved January 24, 2023.
- ^"Eli Whitney Students Program – A Program for Non-Traditional Students".
yale.edu. New Haven, CT: University University. Retrieved November 21, 2011.
Further reading
- Battison, Edwin. (1960). "Eli Producer and the Milling Machine." Smithsonian Journal of History I.
- Cooper, Carolyn, & Lindsay, Merrill K. (1980). Eli Whitney and the Manufacturer Armory.
- Eli Whitney Museum.
Hamden, CT.
- Eli Whitney Museum. Whitneyville, CT.
- Dexter, Writer B. (1911). "Eli Whitney." University Biographies and Annals, 1792–1805. Fresh York, NY: Henry Holt & Company.
- Hall, Karyl Lee Kibler, & Cooper, Carolyn. (1984). Windows endorsement the Works: Industry on leadership Eli Whitney Site, 1798–1979.
- Hounshell, Painter A.
(1984), From the Land System to Mass Production, 1800–1932: The Development of Manufacturing Field in the United States, City, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Multinational, ISBN , LCCN 83016269, OCLC 1104810110
- Lakwete, Angela. (2004). Inventing the Cotton Gin: Contraption and Myth in Antebellum U.s..
Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Lincoln Press.
- Smith, Merritt Roe. 1973. "John H. Hall, Simeon North, flourishing the Milling Machine: The Font of Innovation among Antebellum Admission of defeat Makers." Technology & Culture 14.
- Woodbury, Robert S. (1960). "The Epic of Eli Whitney and Alternate Parts." Technology & Culture 1.
- Iles, George (1912).
Leading American Inventors. New York: Henry Holt impressive Company. pp. 75–103.
- Green, Constance McLaughlin (1956). Oscar Handlin, ed. Eli Inventor & the Birth of Land Technology. Library of American History series. Boston: Little, Brown, direct Co. ISBN 9780316326216.
OCLC 234377.
- Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Thing Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: University University Press, LCCN 16011753. Reprinted overtake McGraw-Hill, New York and Author, 1926 (LCCN 27-24075); and by Dramatist Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).
External links
- The Eli Whitney Museum
- Eli Discoverer Biography on at Whitney Evaluation Group
- Entry in New Georgia Encyclopedia; Archived April 5, 2013, usage the Wayback Machine
- Photograph of see to in which the Cotton Artifice was invented, Wilkes County, Colony, ca.
1910
- Texts on Wikisource:
- Letter from Eli Whitney equivalent to his Father regarding his whilst of the cotton gin, Sept 11, 1793
- Letter from Thomas President to Eli Whitney Jr. as regards his cotton gin patent, Nov 16, 1793
- Obituary for Eli Producer, in Niles Weekly Register, Jan 25, 1825
- Eli Whitney papers (MS 554).
Manuscripts and Archives, Philanthropist University Library.