Eli Whitney

 
Historians believe that one of the greatest pioneers in the birth 
of automation, American inventor, pioneer, mechanical engineer, 
and manufacturer Eli Whitney. 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 self-
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 the 
cotton fibers, making cotton production economical and leading to 
dramatic growth in the United States cotton industry. This 
expansion contributed to an increase of slave labor in the United 
States. Whitney's cotton gin, also called a saw gin, consisted of 
a cylinder to which a number of sawlike teeth were attached. As 
the cylinder revolved, the teeth passed through the closely 
spaced ribs of a fixed comb. When cotton was fed into the gin, 
the teeth caught the cotton fibers and pulled them through the 
comb. The seeds, which were too large to pass between the ribs, 
were left behind,( This principle, with virtually no 
modifications, is still employed in modern automatic saw gins 
used to process the bulk of the U.S. cotton crop).After 
perfecting his machine he filed an application for a patent on 
June 20, 1793; in February 1794 he deposited a model at the 
Patent Office, and on March 14 he received his patent. Whitney's 
gin brought the South prosperity.Whitney entered into partnership 
with the plantation manager, Phineas Miller, to manufacture 
cotton gins at New Haven, Connecticut. A disastrous factory fire 
prevented the partners from making enough gins to meet the 
demand, and manufacturers throughout the South began to copy the 
invention.but the unwillingness of the planters to pay for its 
use and the ease with which the gin could be pirated put 
Whitney's company out of business by 1797. When Congress refused 
to renew the patent, which expired in 1807, Whitney concluded 
that 'an invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the 
inventor.' He never patented his later inventions, one of which 
was a milling machine the other ground gravel used in road 
production. His genius as expressed in tools, machines, and 
technological ideas made the southern United States dominant in 
cotton production and the northern states a bastion of industry. 
He had one sister- Elizabeth, and two brothers- Benjamin and 
Josiah. In 1817 he married Henrietta Frances Edwards of 
Bridgeport, Connecticut. They had three daughters and one son. 
Eli Whitney died in 1824 of natural causes. There is a award this 
day which is for distinguished accomplishments in improving 
capability within the broad concept of orderly production. The 
person receiving this Award should be presently in a top 
management position, active personally in the development of 
ideas, concept of process, associated with engineering, 
responsible for proven concepts, with wide recognition in the 
area of mass production and generating greater productivity 
 
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