Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the
cotton gin
A cotton gin—meaning "cotton engine"—is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation.. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); ...
in 1793, one of the key inventions of the
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...
that shaped the economy of the
Antebellum South.
Whitney's invention made upland short cotton into a profitable crop, which strengthened the economic foundation of
slavery in the United States
The legal institution of human chattel slavery, comprising the enslavement primarily of List of ethnic groups of Africa, Africans and African Americans, was prevalent in the United States of America from its founding in 1776 until 1865 ...
and prolonged the institution. Despite the social and economic impact of his invention, Whitney lost much of his profits in legal battles over patent infringement for the cotton gin. Thereafter, he turned his attention to securing contracts with the government in the manufacture of muskets for the newly formed United States Army. He continued making arms and inventing until his death in 1825.
Early life and education

Whitney was born in
Westborough, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765, the eldest child of Eli Whitney Sr., a prosperous farmer, and his wife Elizabeth Fay, also of Westborough.
The younger Eli was famous during his lifetime and after his death by the name "Eli Whitney", though he was technically Eli Whitney Jr. His son, born in 1820, also named Eli, was known during his lifetime and afterward by the name "Eli Whitney Jr."
Whitney's mother, Elizabeth Fay, died in 1777, when he was 11. At age 14 he operated a profitable nail manufacturing operation in his father's workshop during the
Revolutionary War.
Because his stepmother opposed his wish to attend college, Whitney worked as a farm laborer and school teacher to save money. He prepared for
Yale
Yale University is a private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States, and one of the nine colonial colleges ch ...
at
Leicester Academy (later
Becker College) and under the tutelage of Rev.
Elizur Goodrich of
Durham, Connecticut, he entered Yale in the fall of 1789 and graduated
Phi Beta Kappa
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States. It was founded in 1776 at the College of William & Mary in Virginia. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, ...
in 1792.
Whitney expected to study law but, finding himself short of funds, accepted an offer to go to South Carolina as a private tutor.

Instead of reaching his destination, he was convinced to visit Georgia.
In the closing years of the 18th century, Georgia was a magnet for New Englanders seeking their fortunes (its Revolutionary-era governor had been
Lyman Hall, a migrant from Connecticut). When he initially sailed for South Carolina, among his shipmates were the widow (
Catherine Littlefield Greene) and family of the Revolutionary hero Gen.
Nathanael Greene
Major general (United States), Major General Nathanael Greene (August 7, 1742 – June 19, 1786) was an American military officer and planter who served in the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, Revolutionary War. He emerge ...
of Rhode Island. Mrs. Greene invited Whitney to visit her Georgia plantation,
Mulberry Grove. Her plantation manager and husband-to-be was Phineas Miller, another Connecticut migrant and Yale graduate (class of 1785), who would become Whitney's business partner.
Career
Whitney is most famous for two innovations which came to have significant impacts on the United States in the mid-19th century: the cotton gin (1793) and his advocacy of
interchangeable parts
Interchangeable parts are parts (wikt:component#Noun, components) that are identical for practical purposes. They are made to specifications that ensure that they are so nearly identical that they will fit into any assembly of the same type. One ...
. In the South, the cotton gin revolutionized the way cotton was
harvest
Harvesting is the process of collecting plants, animals, or fish (as well as fungi) as food, especially the process of gathering mature crops, and "the harvest" also refers to the collected crops. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulses fo ...
ed and reinvigorated slavery. Conversely, in the North the adoption of interchangeable parts revolutionized the manufacturing industry, contributing greatly to the U.S. victory in the
Civil War
A civil war is a war between organized groups within the same Sovereign state, state (or country). The aim of one side may be to take control of the country or a region, to achieve independence for a region, or to change government policies.J ...
.
Cotton gin

The cotton gin is a mechanical device that removes the seeds from cotton, a process that had previously been extremely labor-intensive. The word ''gin'' is short for ''engine.'' While staying at Mulberry Grove, Whitney constructed several ingenious household devices which led Mrs Greene to introduce him to some businessmen who were discussing the desirability of a machine to
separate the short staple upland cotton from its seeds, work that was then done by hand at the rate of a pound of lint a day. In a few weeks Whitney produced a model. The cotton gin was a wooden drum stuck with hooks that pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton seeds would not fit through the mesh and fell outside. Whitney occasionally told a story wherein he was pondering an improved method of seeding the cotton when he was inspired by observing a cat attempting to pull a chicken through a fence, and able to only pull through some of the feathers.
A single cotton gin could generate up to of cleaned cotton daily. This contributed to the economic development of the
Southern United States
The Southern United States (sometimes Dixie, also referred to as the Southern States, the American South, the Southland, Dixieland, or simply the South) is List of regions of the United States, census regions defined by the United States Cens ...
, a prime cotton growing area; some historians believe that this invention allowed for the
African slavery system in the Southern United States to become more sustainable at a critical point in its development.
Whitney applied for the patent for his cotton gin on October 28, 1793, and received the patent (later numbered as X72) on March 14, 1794, but it was not validated until 1807. Whitney and his partner, Miller, did not intend to sell the gins. Rather, like the proprietors of
gristmill
A gristmill (also: grist mill, corn mill, flour mill, feed mill or feedmill) grinds cereal grain into flour and Wheat middlings, middlings. The term can refer to either the grinding mechanism or the building that holds it. Grist is grain that h ...
s and
sawmill
A sawmill (saw mill, saw-mill) or lumber mill is a facility where logging, logs are cut into lumber. Modern sawmills use a motorized saw to cut logs lengthwise to make long pieces, and crosswise to length depending on standard or custom sizes ...
s, they expected to charge farmers for cleaning their cotton – two-fifths of the value, paid in cotton. Resentment at this scheme, the mechanical simplicity of the device and the primitive state of
patent law
A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A ...
, made
infringement inevitable. Whitney and Miller could not build enough gins to meet demand, so gins from other makers found ready sale. Ultimately, patent infringement lawsuits consumed the profits (one patent, later annulled, was granted in 1796 to Hogden Holmes for a gin which substituted circular saws for the spikes) and their cotton gin company went out of business in 1797.
One oft-overlooked point is that there were drawbacks to Whitney's first design. There are claims that the use of wires rather than pegs was proposed by Mrs. Greene, but these are disputed.
After validation of the patent, the legislature of South Carolina voted $50,000 for the rights for that state, while North Carolina levied a license tax for five years, from which about $30,000 was realized. There is a claim that Tennessee paid about $10,000.
While the cotton gin did not earn Whitney the fortune he had hoped for, it did give him fame. It has been argued by some historians that Whitney's cotton gin was an important if unintended cause of the American Civil War. After Whitney's invention, the
plantation slavery industry was rejuvenated, eventually culminating in the Civil War.
The cotton gin transformed Southern agriculture and the national economy.
[The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop]
a website for The Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut Southern cotton found ready markets in Europe and in the burgeoning
textile mill
Textile manufacturing or textile engineering is a major industry. It is largely based on the conversion of fibre into yarn, then yarn into fabric. These are then dyed or printed, fabricated into cloth which is then converted into useful good ...
s of
New England
New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...
. Cotton exports from the U.S. boomed after the cotton gin's appearance – from less than in 1793 to by 1810. Cotton was a staple that could be stored for long periods and shipped long distances, unlike most agricultural products. It became the U.S.'s chief export, representing over half the value of U.S. exports from 1820 to 1860.
Before the 1790s, slave labor was primarily employed in growing rice, tobacco, and
indigo
InterGlobe Aviation Limited (d/b/a IndiGo), is an India, Indian airline headquartered in Gurgaon, Haryana, India. It is the largest List of airlines of India, airline in India by passengers carried and fleet size, with a 64.1% domestic market ...
, none of which were especially profitable anymore. Neither was cotton, due to the difficulty of seed removal. But with the invention of the gin, growing cotton with slave labor became highly profitable – the chief source of wealth in the American South, and the basis of frontier settlement from
Georgia
Georgia most commonly refers to:
* Georgia (country), a country in the South Caucasus
* Georgia (U.S. state), a state in the southeastern United States
Georgia may also refer to:
People and fictional characters
* Georgia (name), a list of pe ...
to Texas. "
King Cotton
"King Cotton" is a slogan that summarized the strategy used before the American Civil War (of 1861–1865) by secessionists in the southern states (the future Confederate States of America) to claim the feasibility of secession and to prove ther ...
" became a dominant economic force, and slavery was sustained as a key institution of Southern society.
Interchangeable parts
Eli Whitney has often been incorrectly credited with inventing the idea of interchangeable parts, which he championed for years as a maker of
musket
A musket is a muzzle-loaded long gun that appeared as a smoothbore weapon in the early 16th century, at first as a heavier variant of the arquebus, capable of penetrating plate armour. By the mid-16th century, this type of musket gradually dis ...
s; however, the idea predated Whitney, and Whitney's role in it was one of promotion and popularizing, not invention.
Successful implementation of the idea eluded Whitney until near the end of his life, occurring first in others' armories.
Attempts at interchangeability of parts can be traced back as far as the
Punic Wars
The Punic Wars were a series of wars fought between the Roman Republic and the Ancient Carthage, Carthaginian Empire during the period 264 to 146BC. Three such wars took place, involving a total of forty-three years of warfare on both land and ...
through both archaeological remains of boats now in Museo Archeologico Baglio Anselmi and contemporary written accounts. In modern times the idea developed over decades among many people. An early leader was
Jean-Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval, an 18th-century French
artillerist who created a fair amount of
standardization
Standardization (American English) or standardisation (British English) is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that include firms, users, interest groups, standards organiza ...
of artillery pieces, although not true interchangeability of parts. He inspired others, including
Honoré Blanc and
Louis de Tousard, to work further on the idea, and on shoulder weapons as well as artillery. In the 19th century these efforts produced the "armory system," or
American system of manufacturing
The American system of manufacturing was a set of manufacturing methods that evolved in the 19th century. The two notable features were the extensive use of interchangeable parts and mechanization for production, which resulted in more efficient u ...
. Certain other New Englanders, including
Captain John H. Hall and
Simeon North, arrived at successful interchangeability before Whitney's armory did. The Whitney armory finally succeeded not long after his death in 1825.
The motives behind Whitney's acceptance of a contract to manufacture muskets in 1798 were mostly monetary. By the late 1790s, Whitney was on the verge of bankruptcy and the cotton gin litigation had left him deeply in
debt
Debt is an obligation that requires one party, the debtor, to pay money Loan, borrowed or otherwise withheld from another party, the creditor. Debt may be owed by a sovereign state or country, local government, company, or an individual. Co ...
. His
New Haven
New Haven is a city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound. With a population of 135,081 as determined by the 2020 U.S. census, New Haven is the third largest city in Co ...
cotton gin factory had burned to the ground, and litigation sapped his remaining resources. The
French Revolution had ignited new conflicts between Great Britain, France, and the United States. The new American government, realizing the need to prepare for war, began to rearm. The
War Department issued contracts for the manufacture of 10,000 muskets. Whitney, who had never made a gun in his life, obtained a contract in January 1798 to deliver 10,000 to 15,000 muskets in 1800. He had not mentioned interchangeable parts at that time. Ten months later, the Treasury Secretary,
Oliver Wolcott Jr., sent him a "foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques," possibly one of Honoré Blanc's reports, after which Whitney first began to talk about interchangeability.

In May 1798, Congress voted for legislation that would use 800,000 dollars in order to pay for small arms and cannons in case war with France erupted. It offered a 5,000 dollar incentive with an additional 5,000 dollars once that money was exhausted for the person that was able to accurately produce arms for the government. Because the cotton gin had not brought Whitney the rewards he believed it promised, he accepted the offer. Although the contract was for one year, Whitney did not deliver the arms until 1809, using multiple excuses for the delay. Recently, historians have found that during 1801–1806, Whitney took the money and headed into South Carolina in order to profit from the cotton gin.
Although Whitney's demonstration of 1801 appeared to show the feasibility of creating interchangeable parts,
Merritt Roe Smith concludes that it was "staged" and "duped government authorities" into believing that he had been successful. The charade gained him time and resources toward achieving that goal.
When the government complained that Whitney's price per musket compared unfavorably with those produced in government armories, he was able to calculate an actual price per musket by including
fixed costs such as insurance and
machinery
A machine is a physical system that uses power to apply forces and control movement to perform an action. The term is commonly applied to artificial devices, such as those employing engines or motors, but also to natural biological macromolec ...
, which the government had not accounted for. He thus made early contributions to both the concepts of
cost accounting
Cost accounting is defined by the Institute of Management Accountants as "a systematic set of procedures for recording and reporting measurements of the cost of manufacturing goods and performing services in the aggregate and in detail. It includ ...
, and
economic efficiency
In microeconomics, economic efficiency, depending on the context, is usually one of the following two related concepts:
* Allocative or Pareto efficiency: any changes made to assist one person would harm another.
* Productive efficiency: no addit ...
in manufacturing.
Milling machine
Machine tool historian Joseph W. Roe credited Whitney with inventing the first
milling machine
Milling is the process of machining using rotary cutters to remove material by advancing a cutter into a workpiece. This may be done by varying directions on one or several axes, cutter head speed, and pressure. Milling covers a wide variety of ...
circa 1818. Subsequent work by other historians (Woodbury; Smith; Muir; Battison
">ited by Baida suggests that Whitney was among a group of contemporaries all developing milling machines at about the same time (1814 to 1818), and that the others were more important to the innovation than Whitney was. (The machine that excited Roe may not have been built until 1825, after Whitney's death.) Therefore, no one person can properly be described as the inventor of the milling machine.
Later life and legacy

Despite his humble origins, Whitney was keenly aware of the value of social and political connections. In building his arms business, he took full advantage of the access that his status as a Yale alumnus gave him to other well-placed graduates, such as
Oliver Wolcott Jr.,
Secretary of the Treasury
The United States secretary of the treasury is the head of the United States Department of the Treasury, and is the chief financial officer of the federal government of the United States. The secretary of the treasury serves as the principal a ...
(class of 1778), and
James Hillhouse, a New Haven developer and political leader.
His 1817 marriage to Henrietta Edwards, granddaughter of the famed
evangelist Jonathan Edwards, daughter of
Pierpont Edwards, head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut, and first cousin of Yale's president,
Timothy Dwight, the state's leading
Federalist
The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters call themselves ''Federalists''.
History Europe federation
In Europe, proponents of deep ...
, further tied him to Connecticut's
ruling elite. In a business dependent on government contracts, such connections were essential to success.
Whitney died of
prostate cancer
Prostate cancer is the neoplasm, uncontrolled growth of cells in the prostate, a gland in the male reproductive system below the bladder. Abnormal growth of the prostate tissue is usually detected through Screening (medicine), screening tests, ...
on January 8, 1825, in New Haven, Connecticut, just a month after his 59th birthday. During the course of his illness, he reportedly invented and constructed several devices to mechanically ease his pain.
His son,
Eli Whitney III (known as Eli Whitney Jr.), later took over the Whitney Armory and was instrumental in building New Haven, Connecticut's waterworks.
The
Eli Whitney Students Program, Yale University's admissions program for
non-traditional student
Nontraditional student is a term that refers to a category of students at Higher education, colleges and universities. The term originated in North America and usually involves age and social characteristics. Nontraditional students are contrasted ...
s, is named in honor of Whitney, who not only began his studies there when he was 23,
but also went on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa in just three years.
See also
*
Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences
*
Eli Whitney Museum
*
Whitney family
The Whitney family is a prominent American family descended from non-Norman English immigrant John Whitney (1592–1673), who left London in 1635 and settled in Watertown, Massachusetts. The historic family mansion in Watertown, known as The Elm ...
References
Further reading
*Battison, Edwin. (1960). "Eli Whitney and the Milling Machine." Smithsonian Journal of History I.
*Cooper, Carolyn, & Lindsay, Merrill K. (1980). Eli Whitney and the Whitney Armory.
* Eli Whitney Museum. Hamden, CT.
* Eli Whitney Museum. Whitneyville, CT.
* Dexter, Franklin B. (1911). "Eli Whitney." Yale Biographies and Annals, 1792–1805. New York, NY: Henry Holt & Company.
*Hall, Karyl Lee Kibler, & Cooper, Carolyn. (1984). Windows on the Works: Industry on the Eli Whitney Site, 1798–1979.
*
*Lakwete, Angela. (2004). Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
*Smith, Merritt Roe. 1973. "John H. Hall, Simeon North, and the Milling Machine: The Nature of Innovation among Antebellum Arms Makers." Technology & Culture 14.
*Woodbury, Robert S. (1960). "The Legend of Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts." Technology & Culture 1.
*
* Green, Constance McLaughlin (1956). Oscar Handlin, ed. ''Eli Whitney & the Birth of American Technology''. Library of American Biography series. Boston: Little, Brown, and Co. . .
*
External links
The Eli Whitney MuseumEntry in New Georgia Encyclopedia
Photograph of house in which the Cotton Gin was invented, Wilkes County, Georgia, ca. 1910*
*
ttps://web.archive.org/web/20110325111222/http://www.teachingushistory.org/lessons/JefftoWhit.htm Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Eli Whitney Jr. regarding his cotton gin patent, November 16, 1793Obituary for Eli Whitney, in Niles Weekly Register, January 25, 1825Eli Whitney papers (MS 554) Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Whitney, Eli
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Engineers from Massachusetts
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Hall of Fame for Great Americans inductees
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