The Life and Accomplishments of Eli Whitney

The Life and Accomplishments of Eli Whitney

Historians believe that one of the greatest pioneers in the birth of

automation, American inventor, pioneer, mechanical engineer, and

manufacturer Eli Whitney. He is best remembered as the inventor of the cotton

gin. He made his first violin when he was only 12. Eli started college

when he was 23, in 1788. He left for Georgia and got his first look at

cotton business. He graduated from Yale in 1792, and went to Savannah,

Georgia to teach and study law. After he graduated he went south to tutor

the children of a wealthy plantation owner. He taught school for five

years. Eli Whitney made and sold nails during the Revolutionary war. In

1798 Eli obtained a government contract to make 10,000 muskets. In 1812 he

was given another contract for 15,000 muskets .He built the first firearms

factory to use mass production methods. When Eli Whitney built his first

factory in 1798, he allocated a great deal of his precious resources to

providing housing for his workers as well as ensuring that they were well

off financially. This consideration marked his entire career as an

industrialist. He wanted to "employ steady sober people,"tied to his

factory and part of a community of industry. He intended to create a sel

-sufficient village, producing goods, and populated by well educated,

happy workers,Whitneyville. He also affected the industrial development of

the United States , in manufacturing muskets but most of whitney's own

guns parts do not in fact interchange. Nevertheless, Eli Whitney is a

figure whose history is fascinating, and whose impact in New Haven can not

be overstated. He translated the concept of interchangeable parts into a

manufacturing system, giving birth to the Americanmass-production concept.

Whitney saw that a machine to clean the seed from cotton could make the

South prosperous and make its inventor rich. He set to work at once and

within days had drawn a sketch to explain his idea; 10 days later he

constructed a crude model that separated fiber from seed. By 1793 he

designed and constructed a machine called the cotton gin, that quickly

separated cotton seed from the shortstaple cotton fiber. The first cotton

gin was a wooden box that spun around a drum and picked the cotton seed

with wire hooks.Cotton Gin, machine used to separate the fibers of cotton

from the seeds. Before the invention of the cotton gin, seeds had to be

removed from cotton fibers by hand; this labor-intensive and time-

consuming process made growing and harvesting cotton uneconomical. The

cotton gin allowed the seeds to be removed mechanically and rapidly from