Eli Whitney
Eli Whitney
He was born on December 8, 1765, in Westboro, Massachusetts. Eli Whitney grew up on a farm, but loved technology and machine work. During the Revolutionary War, he became an expert at making nails from a device of his own invention. In 1789, he went to Yale College and graduated in 1792. In 1817, Whitney married Henrietta Edwards. The couple would have several children. Whitney died on January 8, 1825, in New Haven, Connecticut.
After graduation, Whitney was hired to be a tutor in South Carolina. He later refused the job and instead accepted Catherine Greene’s offer to read law at her Mulberry Grove plantation.
In that time, it took hours of manual labor to properly clean the seed and extract the fiber off cotton. With Greene’s support, Whitney worked through the winter to devise a machine that was able to quickly and efficiently clean the cotton using a system of hooks, wires and a rotating brush. Whitney Invented the cotton gin, a device that produces more cotton in an hour than what could be produced by multiple workers in a day.
This device he invented, although it might not be used today, but it still shaped a path for all the devices used to produce cotton nowadays. This device had a huge impact for years and years, and in a way it still has. Most of us wear cotton clothes or sleep under a cotton bed cover everyday, cotton that was produced by machines. Those machines walked in the path shaped by Whitney and his cotton gin invention
He was born on December 8, 1765, in Westboro, Massachusetts. Eli Whitney grew up on a farm, but loved technology and machine work. During the Revolutionary War, he became an expert at making nails from a device of his own invention. In 1789, he went to Yale College and graduated in 1792. In 1817, Whitney married Henrietta Edwards. The couple would have several children. Whitney died on January 8, 1825, in New Haven, Connecticut.
After graduation, Whitney was hired to be a tutor in South Carolina. He later refused the job and instead accepted Catherine Greene’s offer to read law at her Mulberry Grove plantation.
In that time, it took hours of manual labor to properly clean the seed and extract the fiber off cotton. With Greene’s support, Whitney worked through the winter to devise a machine that was able to quickly and efficiently clean the cotton using a system of hooks, wires and a rotating brush. Whitney Invented the cotton gin, a device that produces more cotton in an hour than what could be produced by multiple workers in a day.
This device he invented, although it might not be used today, but it still shaped a path for all the devices used to produce cotton nowadays. This device had a huge impact for years and years, and in a way it still has. Most of us wear cotton clothes or sleep under a cotton bed cover everyday, cotton that was produced by machines. Those machines walked in the path shaped by Whitney and his cotton gin invention