Whitney, Eli (1765-1825), American inventor, best known for his invention of the cotton gin. Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765, and educated at Yale College (now Yale University). In 1792 he visited the plantation, near Savannah, Georgia, of Catharine Greene, widow of the American Revolutionary War general Nathanael Greene. There he designed and built a model for a machine that would separate the seeds from the fibers of the short-staple cotton plant, work that …
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…for renewal of the patent. In all, he profited very little from his invention. In 1798 Whitney turned to the large-scale manufacture of firearms. After signing a contract to supply the federal government with 10,000 military muskets, he built a factory near New Haven, at present-day Hamden, in which he experimented with a system of manufacturing standardized, interchangeable parts. He died in New Haven on January 8, 1825. Bibliography www.geocites.com Encatra Encyclopedia2000 The Inventions of Eli Whitney