CpSc 372: Introduction to Software Development
Jason O. Hallstrom
Eli Whitney is best known as the inventor of
the cotton gin, a machine that changed cotton
growing in the South. Less famous but just as
important are the improvements Whitney made
in the way products are manufactured. Eli
Whitney's inventive ideas affected United
States history in a way that he might never
have imagined.
Eli Whitney was born on a farm near
Westboro, Massachusetts, in 1765. His father,
like many farmers of the day, had a workshop
in which he made and repaired tools and farm
equipment. Even as a boy, young Eli was very
good at making things and learned much from
his father.
After he graduated from college in 1792, Eli
Whitney was unsure about the kind of work he
wanted to do. Sailing south along the eastern
coast of the United States, he met Catherine
Greene, the owner of a large plantation near
Savannah, Georgia. Greene invited Whitney to
visit her home, where she quickly realized his
talent for making things. She and Phineas
(FINN•ee•us) Miller, her plantation manager,
told Whitney they needed a faster way to
prepare cotton for market. Before the end of
1793, Eli Whitney had built a machine called
the cotton gin that solved their problem. Soon,
Whitney and Miller went into business together,
and news of their new machine spread quickly.
Because it allowed farmers to clean raw cotton
for market far more quickly than before, the
cotton gin made cotton a money-making crop.
However, others began copying the idea and
Whitney and Miller earned very little money
from their creation.
By 1798 Eli Whitney was at work on his
second big discovery. He created a faster and
less expensive way to manufacture goods—in
Source: http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/biographies/whitney/
As a
Boy
Cotton
Gin
Copying
the Idea
CpSc 372: Introduction to Software Development
Jason O. Hallstrom
this case, guns for the United States
government. For many years, products such as
muskets, a kind of gun, were made one at a
time. Talented craftspeople worked slowly to
produce each item by hand. As a result, the
products were expensive and hard to get.
Because each product was different from any
other, goods like muskets were also difficult to
repair. If a musket broke, replacement parts to
fix it usually had to be made by hand.
To solve this problem, Eli Whitney came up
with the idea of mass production. Whitney's
plan was to build machines to make many
copies of each musket part and then use those
parts to put together guns that were all the
same. Whitney even created the machinery,
called a milling machine, to make these massproduced parts. Whitney's milling machine did
much of the work, so the guns could be made
by less skilled workers. This made it possible
to produce well-made guns more quickly and
for less money. Because guns produced by
mass production were all made by the same
machine at the same time, they had
interchangeable parts. This meant that any part
could be used in any gun. Having
interchangeable parts made Whitney's muskets
easy to repair. Whitney's idea of
interchangeable parts worked for any kind of
manufactured product, not just guns. His New
Haven, Connecticut, factory finally made Eli
Whitney a wealthy man.
In January 1817, at the age of 49, Eli
Whitney married Henrietta Edwards. They had
four children. Whitney hired someone else to
run his factory so he could spend his time with
his family. In January of 1825, he died at the
age of 59.
Source: http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/biographies/whitney/
CpSc 372: Introduction to Software Development
Source: http://www.harcourtschool.com/activity/biographies/whitney/
Jason O. Hallstrom