Everything about Eli Whitney totally explained
Eli Whitney (
December 8,
1765 –
January 8,
1825) was an
American inventor best known as the inventor of the
cotton gin. This was one of the key inventions of the
industrial revolution and shaped the economy of the
antebellum South. Whitney's invention made short staple cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of slavery. Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost his profits in legal battles over patent infringement, closed his business, and nearly filed bankruptcy.
Afterward Whitney became a firearms manufacturer who supplied
muskets to the United States government. He spent the remainder of his career promoting the idea of
interchangeable parts for the manufacture of
firearms. Although he wasn't the first to propose the concept of interchangeable parts and never developed a working system of interchangeable parts, he popularized the idea as a useful manufacturing concept. In order to justify the sale price of his contracted firearms to the government he developed improvements in
cost accounting that included
fixed costs that had gone overlooked in federal estimates for price comparison.
Early life
Whitney was born in
Westborough, Massachusetts, on
December 8,
1765, the eldest child of Eli Whitney, a prosperous farmer and his mother, Elizabeth Fay of Westborough, who died when he was 12. Very early in life he demonstrated his mechanical genius and entrepreneurial acumen, operating a profitable nail manufacturing operation in his father's workshop during the American Revolution. Because his stepmother opposed his wish to attend college, Whitney worked as a farm laborer and schoolteacher to save money. He prepared for
Yale at Leicester Academy (now
Becker College) and under the tutelage of Rev.Elizur Goodrich of
Durham, Connecticut he entered the Class of 1792.
Career inventions
Cotton gin
Eli Whitney was inspired to build the cotton gin by observing a
cat attempting to pull a
chicken through a fence, and could only pull through some of the
feathers.
A single cotton gin could generate up to fifty-five 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 wasn't validated until 1807. Whitney and his partner Miller didn't intend to sell the gins. Rather, like the proprietors of
grist and
sawmills, they expected to charge farmers for cleaning their cotton - two-fifths of the profits, paid in cotton. Resentment at this scheme, the mechanical simplicity of the device, and the primitive state of
patent law, made
infringement inevitable. As Whitney and Miller were unable to produce enough gins to meet demand, imitation gins began to spread. Ultimately, patent infringement lawsuits consumed the profits and their cotton gin company went out of business in 1797.
While the cotton gin didn't earn Whitney the fortune he'd hoped for, it did give him fame and the cotton gin transformed Southern agriculture and the national economy. Southern cotton found ready markets in
Europe and in the burgeoning
textile mills of
New England. Cotton agriculture revived the profitability of slavery and the political power of supporters of the South's "
peculiar institution." By the 1820s, the dominant issues in American politics were driven by "
King Cotton": maintaining the political balance between
slave and
free states and
tariff protection for American industry. The cotton interests led the country into war with
Mexico, expecting a vast expansion of cotton agriculture
Interchangeable parts
Though Whitney is popularly credited with the invention of a
musket that could be manufactured with
interchangeable parts, the idea predated him. The idea is credited to
Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, a
French artillerist, and credits for finally perfecting the "armory system," or
American system of manufacturing, is given by historian
Merritt Roe Smith to
Captain John H. Hall and by historian
Diana Muir writing in
Reflections in Bullough's Pond to
Simeon North. In
From the American System to Mass Production, historian
David A. Hounshell described how de Gribeauval's idea propagated from France to the colonies via two routes: from
Honoré Blanc through 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 establishing the
armories at
Springfield and
Harpers Ferry.
By the late 1790s, Whitney was on the verge of
bankruptcy and cotton gin litigation had left him deeply in
debt. His
New Haven cotton gin factory had burned to the ground, and litigation sapped his remaining resources. The
French Revolution had ignited new conflicts between England, France, and the United States. The new American government, realizing the need to prepare for war, began to rearm. The
War Department issued contracts for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets. Whitney, who had never made a gun in his life, obtained a contract in January, 1798 to deliver ten to fifteen thousand muskets in 1800. He hadn't mentioned
interchangeable parts at that time. Ten months later,
Treasury Secretary Wolcott sent him a "foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques," possibly one of Honoré 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 interchangeable parts, and even arranged a public demonstration of the concept in order to gain time. He didn't deliver on the contract until 1809, but then spent the rest of his life publicizing the idea of interchangeability.
Whitney's defenders have claimed that he invented the
American system of manufacturing -- the combination of power machinery,
interchangeable parts, and division of labor that would underlie the nation's subsequent industrial revolution. While there's persuasive evidence that he failed to achieve interchangeability, his use of power machinery and specialized
division of labor are well documented . When the government complained that Whitney's price per musket compared unfavorably with those produced in government armories, Whitney was able to calculate an actual price per musket by including
fixed costs such as
insurance and
machinery, which the government hadn't included. He thus made early contributions to both the concept of
cost accounting, and the concept of the
efficiency of private industry.
Later life and legacy
Despite his humble origins, Whitney was keenly aware of the value of social and political connections. In building his arms business, he took full advantage of the access that his status as a
Yale alumnus gave him to other well-placed graduates, such as
Secretary of War Oliver Wolcott (Class of 1778) and New Haven developer and political leader
James Hillhouse. His 1817 marriage to Henrietta Edwards, granddaughter of the famed
evangelist Jonathan Edwards, daughter of
Pierpont Edwards, head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut, and first cousin of Yale's president,
Timothy Dwight, the state's leading
Federalist, further tied him to Connecticut's
ruling elite. In a business dependent on government contracts, such connections were essential to success.
Whitney died of
prostate cancer on
January 8,
1825, leaving a widow and four children. His
armory was left in the charge of his talented nephews,
Eli Whitney and
Philos Blake, notable
inventors and
manufacturers in their own right (they invented the
mortise lock and the stone-crushing machine).
Eli Whitney, Jr. (1820-1894) assumed control of the armory in 1841. Working under
contract to inventor
Samuel Colt, the younger Whitney manufactured the famous "Whitneyville Walker Colts" for the
Texas Rangers. The success of this contract rescued Colt from financial ruin and enabled him to establish his own famous
arms company. Whitney's marriage to Sarah Dalliba, daughter of the
U.S. Army's
chief of ordinance, helped to assure the continuing success of his business.
The younger Whitney organized the New Haven Water Company, which began operations in 1862. While this enterprise addressed the city's need for water, it also enabled Whitney to increase the amount of power available for his manufacturing operations at the expense of the water company's stockholders. A new dam made it possible to consolidate his operations—originally located in three sites along the
Mill River—in a single plant. This dam still exists.
Whitney's grandson, Eli Whitney IV (1847-1924), sold the Whitney Armory to
Winchester Repeating Arms, another notable New Haven gun company, in 1888. He served as president of the water company until his death and was a major New Haven business and civic leader. He played an important role in the development of New Haven's Ronan-Edgehill Neighborhood.
Following the closure of the armory, the factory site continued to be used for a variety of industrial purposes, including the water company. Many of the original armory buildings remained intact until the 1960s. In the 1970s, as part of the
Bicentennial celebration, interested citizens organized the
Eli Whitney Museum, which opened to the public in 1984. The site today includes the boarding house and barn that served Eli Whitney's original workers and a stone storage building from the original armory. Museum exhibits and programs are housed in a factory building constructed c. 1910. A water company office building constructed in the 1880s now houses educational programs operated by the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (which succeeded the New Haven Water Company).
Eli Whitney and his descendants are buried in
New Haven's historic
Grove Street Cemetery. Yale College's
Eli Whitney Students Program, which is one of the four doors into Yale College, is named after Whitney in recognition of his venerable age at the time of his entrance to Yale College in 1792; he was twenty-Three years old.
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