WHITNEY, Eli [1765-1825] -- American inventor (cotton gin, firearms)

WHITNEY, ELI, inventor, was born Dec. 8, 1765, in Westborough, Mass. The first of his inventions was the cotton gin, which he was stimulated to devise by the widow of Nathaniel Green. He afterward reaped a fortune by his various improvements on fire-arms; the manufacturing of which became the origin of the flourishing village of Whitneyville, Conn. He died Jan. 8, 1825, in New Haven, Conn. HE

It was not until after Eli Whitney invented the "gin" (from engine) for removing seeds from cotton that cotton was used extensively. Prior to that time flax, which produced linen, was the item from which people made many of their household items and clothing articles.

WHITNEY, Eli, inventor, was born in West-borough, Mass., Dec. 8, 1765. He engaged in the business of making nails by hand, and by his industry saved money enough to pay his college expenses, being graduated from Yale, A.B., 1792, A.M., 1795. He was invited by the widow of Gen. Nathanael Greene to make his home at her plantation, called Mulberry Grove, on the Savannah river in Georgia. He studied law, but abandoned it to follow his mechanical talent, devoting himself to the problem of inventing a machine for separating cotton lint from the seed.

In 1793 he solved the difficulty by completing the saw cotton gin, which consists of two cylinders: one, revolving with great velocity, to pull the lint from the seed by means of from fifty to eighty steel disks with serrated edges, and the other to remove the lint from the saw teeth by means of stiff brushes. This machine, which, with a few improvements remains exactly as it was first invented, has a capacity equal to that of 3000 pairs of hands in separating the lint from the seed, which process, up to the time of its invention, was the only means used in the separation.

Mr. Whitney was unable to keep his invention secret, and before he could obtain a patent several gins were being operated on various neighboring plantations. He formed a partnership with Phineas Miller, and removed to Connecticut to manufacture the machines, but owing to endless litigation caused by the infringement of his patent, he was obliged in 1796 to devote himself to the manufacture of firearms in order to obtain a livelihood.

He removed to New Haven, Conn., and originated the system of making the manufacture of different parts of a gun interchangeable among several mechanics. He built an armory at Whitneyville, near New Haven, and filled a government contract for ten thousand stands of muskets.

He received $50,000 from the legislature of South Carolina for the general use of the cotton gin, and was allowed a further royalty on every gin used in the state, but considering the universal benefit derived from the invention, this was but small recompense.

He established a fund of $500 at Yale college, the interest to be devoted to the purchase of books or, mechanical and physical science. He was married in 1817, to a daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards ¤. His "Memoir" was published by Denison Olmsted in 1846. He died in New Haven, Conn., Jan. 8, 1825. BDNA  
 

• Father-in-law: ¤EDWARDS, Pierpont [1750-1826] American lawyer and jurist, delegate