WHITNEY, Eli
(1765–1825), American inventor, best known for his
invention of the cotton gin.
Whitney was born in Westboro, Mass., on Dec. 8, 1765, and
educated at Yale College (now Yale University). In 1792 he was a
guest on the plantation, near Savannah, Ga., of Catharine Greene
(1753–1814), widow of the American revolutionary war general
Nathanael Greene. There he designed and built a model for a machine
that would separate the seeds from the fibers of the short-staple
cotton plant, work that until that time had been done by hand. His
first cotton gin was produced in 1793. With the gin, cotton could
be cleaned so quickly that it became the most important crop in
the South and the basis of a profitable agricultural economy, profoundly
affecting the history of the region.
Whitney entered into partnership with the plantation manager,
Phineas Miller (fl. 1792–1803), who married Greene in 1796,
to manufacture cotton gins at New Haven, Conn. 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. Although Whitney and Miller received a patent on the
gin in 1794, not until 1807 was a decision rendered protecting their
patent, and in 1812 Congress denied Whitney’s petition
for renewal of this protection. In all, he profited very little
from it.
In 1798 Whitney turned to the large-scale manufacture of firearms.
After signing a contract to supply the federal government with 10,000
military muskets, he built a factory near New Haven, at present-day Hamden,
in which he originated the mass-production system of manufacturing
standardized, interchangeable parts. He died in New Haven on Jan.
8, 1825.