Eli Whitney - Invention and innovation, Other Inventions

Inventor and engineer, born in Westborough, Massachusetts, USA. He showed early mechanical skill, manufacturing nails at home by age 15. Determined to get an education, he taught at schools to pay for his way at Yale (1789–92). Moving to Savannah, GA to teach, he found the post filled, but he was invited to stay on the plantation belonging to General Nathanael Green's widow. After learning of the problems of local cotton growers, by spring of 1793 he had developed the cotton gin for separating cotton from its seeds, a machine that could perform the work of 50 slaves. He soon ran into patent difficulties, and though he eventually won in court (1807), he profited very little from his invention. Deciding to turn to the manufacture of rifles, in 1798 he obtained a contract from the US government and opened a factory near New Haven, CT, and it was the manufacturing of firearms that led to his considerable fortune. Although now popularly associated with the cotton gin, he is actually more important for inventing machines that produced interchangeable gun parts, the basis for his reputation as the originator of mass production.

Invention and innovation

Cotton gin

Although Whitney is credited with the first patent on a cotton gin in 1793, the most likely first inventor was Henry Ogden Holmes. The cotton gin is a mechanical device which removes the seeds from cotton, a process which until that time had been extremely labor-intensive. The cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks, which pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton gin could generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily. This contributed to the economic development of the Southern states of the United States, a prime cotton growing area;

Whitney received a patent (numbered X72) for his cotton gin on March 14, 1794, however, it was not validated until 1807. Whitney and Miller charged farmers an expensive price for doing the ginning for them - two-fifths of the profits, paid in cotton. Whitney's cotton gin company went out of business in 1797.

Other Inventions

Although Whitney is popularly credited with the invention of a musket that could be manufactured with interchangeable parts, the idea predates him and he never succeeded at it. In From the American System to Mass Production, historian David Hounshell describes how de Gribeauval's idea propagated from France to the colonies via two routes: from Honoré Blanc via 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 in establishing the armories at Springfield and Harper's Ferry.

Whitney, who was not doing well with his cotton gin business, obtained a contract in January, 1798 to deliver ten to fifteen thousand muskets in 1800. Ten months later, Treasury Secretary Wolcott sent him a "foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques", possibly one of 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 interchangeability, and even arranged a public demonstration of the concept in order to gain time. (Hounshell, pp 30-32)

The Eli Whitney Museum is now housed in his former musket factory.