Biography eli whitney
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Eli Whitney
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Who Was Eli Whitney?
Eli Whitney studied at Yale before going on to invent the cotton gin, a device that highly streamlined the process of extracting fiber from cotton seeds. With the patent for his device being widely pirated, Whitney struggled to earn any recompense for his invention. He later went on to pioneer “interchangeable parts” systems of production.
Early Life
Eli Whitney was born on December 8, , in Westboro, Massachusetts. He grew up on a farm, yet had an affinity for machine work and technology. As a youth during the Revolutionary War, he became an specialist at making nails from a device of his own invention. He later crafted canes and ladies’ hatpins, recognizing opportunity when it arose.
Creating the Cotton Gin
In , Whitney started to attend Yale College and graduated in , with some deliberation about becoming a lawyer. Upon graduation, Whitney was hired to be a tutor in South Carolina. On his way to his new position via boat, he met Catherine
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Of all the post-Revolutionary Americans who grew up without knowing the name for what they felt within themselves, Eli Whitney had the most tortuous career. Yet more than any other one man, he shaped the opposing faces of both the North and South for a half-century to come. By slavery was a declining institution in amerika. Apart from tobacco, rice, and a special strain of cotton that could be grown only in very few places, the South really had no money crop to export.
Engraving of Eli Whitney,
by Samuel F.B. Morse, c.
New Haven Colony Historical Society
Sea Island cotton, so named because it grew only in very sandy soil along the coast, was a recent crop and within a short time was being cultivated wherever it found favorable conditions. Tobacco was a land waster, depleting the soil within very few years. Land was so cheap that tobacco planters never bothered to reclaim the soil by crop rotation -- they simply found new land farther west. The other crops -- rice, indigo, cor
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Eli Whitney Blake
American inventor
Eli Whitney Blake, Sr. (January 27, – August 18, ) was an American inventor, best known for his mortise lock and stone-crushing machine, the latter of which earned him a place into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.
Early life
[edit]Blake was born on January 27, , in Westborough in Worcester County, Massachusetts. He was the son of Elihu Blake and Elizabeth Fay (néeWhitney) Blake. His older brother, also named Elihu Blake, was the father of William Phipps Blake.[1] His sister, Maria Georgianna Blake, was married to Archibald Burgess.[2]
He was a nephew of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. His maternal grandparents were Eli Whitney Sr., a prosperous farmer, and his wife Elizabeth (née Fay) Whitney. His paternal grandparents were Tamar (née Thompson) Blake and Ebenezer Blake Jr., a descendant of William Blake, who emigrated from England to Dorchester between and , and later helped William Pynchon settle S