Eli Whitney and the cotton gin invention

Eli Whitney the Father of American Technology

Eli Whitney has been deemed the "father of American technology," for two innovations: the cotton gin, and the idea of using interchangeable parts. Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765 and died on January 8, 1825 in New Haven Connecticut. Though he is best remembered for inventing the cotton gin, his most important contribution was the development of mass production and interchangeable parts.

Whitney entered Yale College in May of 1789. There he learned many of the new concepts and experiments in science and the applied arts, as technology was then called. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in the fall of 1792. Whitney was disappointed twice in promised teaching posts. The second offer was in Georgia, where, stranded without employment, short of cash, and far from home be was befriended by Catharine Greene, widow of the Revolutionary War general. It was at this time that Whitney met and befriended. Phineas Miller, manager of Greene's plantation Mulberry Grove. Like Whitney Greene was Yale educated and born in New England (Mirsky).

Cotton Gin

By April of 1793, Whitney had designed and constructed the cotton gin, a machine that automated the separation of cottonseed from the short-staple cotton fiber. This invention revolutionized the cotton industry in the United States. Previous to this innovation, farming cotton required hundreds of man-hours to separate the cottonseed from the raw cotton fibers. Simple seed-removing devices have been around for centuries; however, Eli Whitney's invention automated the seed separation process. His machine could generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily, making cotton production profitable for the southern states.

Whitney secured a patent for his new machine in 1794, and he and Miller went into business manufacturing and servicing the new gins. However, the unwillingness of the planters to pay the service costs and the ease with which the gins could be pirated put the partners out of business by 1797.

After the invention of the cotton gin, cotton became America's leading crop. In 1790, America produced 1,500 pounds of cotton. By 1800, production had increased to 35,000 pounds. By 1815, production had reached 100,000 pounds. In 1848, production exceeded 1,000,000 pounds. Simultaneously, slavery spread across the Deep South. In 1790, the slave population was concentrated in Virginia on the tobacco plantations and along the coast of South Carolina and Georgia on the rice plantations. In 1820, slavery had spread westward to Mississippi. By the Civil War, about 4 million slaves lived in the South (Bruchey, p.16-17).

Mass Production

Whitney learned much from his experience. In 1797 the government, threatened by war with France, solicited 40,000 muskets from private contractors. The two national armories had produced only 1,000 muskets in three years using the conventional method of manufacturing whereby a skilled workman fashioned a complete musket, forming and fitting each part. Each weapon was unique. If a part broke its replacement had to be especially made.

Whitney's plan was to supply 10,000 muskets in two years. He designed machine tools by which an unskilled workman made only a particular part that conformed precisely as precision was then measured to a model. The sum of such parts was a musket. Any part would fit any musket of that design. He had grasped the concept of interchangeable parts. In 1801 before President-elect Thomas Jefferson and other officials, Whitney demonstrated the result of his system. From piles of disassembled muskets they picked parts at random and assembled complete muskets. This was the beginning of the American system of mass production.

By the middle of the 19th century the general concepts of division of labor, machine-assisted manufacture, and assembly of standardized parts were well established. Large factories were in operation and some industries, such as textiles and steel, were using processes, machinery, and equipment that would be recognizable even in the late 20th century. The growth of manufacturing was accelerated by the rapid expansion of rail, barge, ship, and road transportation. The new transport companies not only enabled factories to obtain raw materials and to ship finished products over increasingly large distances, but they also created a substantial demand for the output of the new industries ("Industrial Engineering and Production Management").