Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney

Born: Westboro, Massachusetts; December 8, 1765

Died: New Haven; January 8, 1825

Entry by Albert E. Van Dusen

As a youth Whitney showed marked mechanical aptitude. Entering Yale College belatedly, he was graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1792. He went South to serve as a private tutor, but instead lived as a guest of Mrs. Nathanael Greene, widow of the Revolutionary general, who proposed that he devise a machine to clean seeds from green-seed upland cotton.

Ten days of work produced a model, but it took six months of intensive work to perfect the cotton gin. He formed a partnership with Phineas Miller to produce and sell the gin and in 1794 obtained a patent for it. Unfortunately others had already pirated his ideas and even spread the rumor that his gins damaged the cotton. He was thus forced to bring many suits, including sixty unsuccessful ones, for infringement on his patent. Meanwhile, he set up a factory at New Haven to manufacture cotton gins. When fire destroyed his factory in 1795, he quickly rebuilt it, but financial problems plagued him incessantly. Rivals continued to slander him and to use their own copies of his machine, causing sales of his gin to cease. While he finally won some suits and collected damages, he netted very little profit despite the enormous increase in cotton production. He did, however, learn some important lessons which helped his future endeavors.

Embittered and disillusioned by his experience, he turned to a very different field--making muskets for the United States government, a more dependable source of capital. At Mill Rock, present-day