Eli Whitney biography

Eli Whitney was a very influential man and lived a successful life. Whitney’s life started on December 8, 1765 in Westborough Massachusetts. Whitney grew up with a poor and unhappy childhood. His family consisted of his mother Elizabeth, his father Eli and his four siblings. At a young age Whitney’s mother died and one year afterword his father remarried a woman by the name of Judith Hazelton. In disregard for his childhood Whitney’s knowledge and skill with machines allowed him to make nails and fix machines to pay for his Yale education. After Yale Whitney went to Georgia where he planned to tutor for a wealthy family and study law, yet that did not work because he quit after not being paid they price he was promised. After leaving his tutoring job Whitney met up with a friend, Phineas Miller, with whom he had graduated from Yale. Miller managed a plantation owned by civil war General Nathaniel Greene’s widow, Catherin Greene, in the small town of Mulberry. Seeing Whitney had no job, Miller offered to employ him in fixing the many mechanical errors that came with owning such a large plantation. After working on the plantation for so long Whitney began to watch the slaves. While watching them Whitney noticed how they used a comb like device to clean the cotton off the plant. Whitney noticed how time consuming it was to clean a whole cotton plant and thought there must be a better way. Finally in 1793 with the help of Miller and the slaves of the plantation Whitney had designed the first cotton gin. A one cylinder, hand cranked machine with a series of teeth that pulled the cotton from the seed. The cotton gin was able to do a whole day’s work in less then an hour. In 1807 almost 14 years after the initial design, Whitney’s cotton gin received a government patent. Despite the patent it was very easy for other plantation owners to duplicate his machine with minor changes, which then lead to court hearing after court hearing. Although Whitney is credited with the design and production of the first cotton gin some say a British man by the name of Joseph Eve created the first cotton gin and Whitney merely copied his design. Sadly, the cotton gin business was not a profitable one and Whitney made no money. After Whitney got tired of court battles for the cotton gin’s production rights he retired from the business. Later in his life after retiring from the cotton gin business Whitney moved to New Haven Connecticut. While in Connecticut he started a gun making business. Over the years of the business Whitney noticed how all muskets where hand made and if a part broke there was only one way to fix it, duplicating the exact part that broke because no two muskets were exactly alike. Whitney did not like this, after a few years of trying Whitney was able to mass produce muskets that were identical. Even though all the evidence was there some officials did not believe it was possible. In order to prove that it was possible Whitney did a public demonstration. For the demonstration Whitney dumped parts for ten muskets onto a table and challenged officials to build ten muskets. After completing this task the officials were immediately convinced, a few weeks after the demonstration Whitney was offered a government contract to build ten thousand muskets. The reason for this contract was at the time war with France was probable and the government wanted to be prepared. Whitney worked diligently, yet due to complications and problems it took him ten years to fulfill this contract. Even though it took Whitney ten years to make ten thousands muskets it might have took other companies thirty years because no other companies had the mass production capabilities that Whitney’s had. One of the reasons this took so long was because Whitney believed that for quality products to be produced you needed a quality company and in order to have a quality company you need to have happy and healthy workers. Therefore Whitney let his workers have more sick and vacation days then other companies, because of this his workers were very happy with where they worked and admired Whitney. Whitney had wanted to expand his company for some time but was not allowed to because he still had not completed his task. Although the ten years of working paid off and Whitney’s company was allowed to expand. After many years of working in the gun business Whitney retired and was credited with many accomplishments. Whitney’s major accomplishments are one, designing and producing the first cotton gin two, being the first to create a gun business where the parts were interchangeable and three, greatly contributing to the major industrial transfer of our country. Among Whitney’s many accomplishments he was able to add one last to his record book in the final years of his life, a town was renamed after him and the locals called it Whitneyville. At the end of his time Whitney had one life to look back on and I’m sure he appreciated it.