-
Birth
December 8, 1765
Westborough, Massachusetts -
Parents
Westborough, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765, the eldest child of Eli Whitney Sr., a prosperous farmer, and his wife Elizabeth Fay of Westborough. -
mother dies
His mother died when he was just 11 years of age -
school
He prepared for Yale at Leicester Academy and under the tutelage of Rev. Elizur Goodrich of Durham, Connecticut, he entered the Class of 1789, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1792. Before that he was working on a farm -
inventions
Whitney is most famous for two innovations which later divided the United States in the mid-19th century: the cotton gin and his advocacy of interchangeable parts. -
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. 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.The invention got really famouse because doing it by hand was hard and took a long time.The invention created a demand for more slaves. -
Interchangable parts
Elis invention interchangable parts was created in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The invention made it easier to take apart things and fix them. -
the patent
Whitney received a patent for his cotton gin on March 14, 1794; however, it was not validated until 1807. -
deth
January 8, 1825 at age age 59 in New Haven, Connecticut -
Todays inventions
Now a day cotton gins are controlled by computers and are faster and more effciant.
