Eli Whitney--论文代写范文精选

51due论文代写网精选代写范文：“Eli Whitney”这篇论文主要向我们介绍了美国发明家惠特尼。其实他不仅仅是发明家，同时他还是一名机械工程师和企业家。他毕业于耶鲁大学，在1793年，他研制出一种扎花机，能迅速从棉籽上分离出短的棉纤维，提高了生产效率，并且他还提出了可互换零件的概念。

Eli Whitney: America’s Cotton Connoisseur There are three basic necessities needed in order for anyone to survive: food, shelter, and clothing. Eli Whitney, an American inventor and manufacturer, is a major contributor to the latter of these needs. Whitney, a man of great perseverance and a victim of unfortunate circumstances, is best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin. His invention, coupled with the development of the textile industry by Samuel Slater, led to a cotton revolution. Born on December 8, 1765, Eli Whitney spent his early years on his family’s farm in Westborough, Massachusetts (Britton 12). His mother died when he was twelve, so he took more responsibility on the farm with his three younger siblings and his father. Whitney had a special talent that was evident to his family and neighbors around him. He possessed a great understanding of mechanics and used it to his advantage. According to Karen Britton, Eli Whitney “once pretended to be ill so that he could stay home from church and take apart his father’s watch. 

Unlike most curious children, however, he was able to put it back together so that it ran perfectly” (12). He started working as a blacksmith, and made nails on a machine he had at home. One interesting fact is that Eli Whitney was at one time the country’s sole manufacturer of ladies’ hatpins (Wilson 78). During the Revolutionary War, he opened a small business and produced nails to help with the shortage. After the war, the price of nails went back down and Whitney’s interests went elsewhere (Britton 12). He was determined to enter Yale College, but he did not have the financial means to do so. Whitney worked as a teacher in a nearby town to earn money for school. In March, 1789, he moved to New Haven, Connecticut, and entered Yale at the age of twenty-three (Britton 12). Eli Whitney graduated in 1792 and faced the problem of finding a job that suited him. He decided to stay with teaching and was offered a position as a tutor in South Carolina for the pay of one hundred guineas a year (Wilson 79). 

The pay offered was too great to refuse so Whitney chose to accept and ventured outside the North for the first time in his life. On the voyage from New York to Savannah, he befriended Catherine Greene, the widow of Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Greene. Also on the trip was Phineas Miller, a Yale alumnus who was soon to marry Mrs. Greene (Wilson 79). Whitney had planned to travel to South Carolina after arriving in Savannah but he soon learned that the tutoring job only paid fifty guineas. This caused him to stay in Savannah with Greene and Miller on the plantation that they owned (Wilson 80). While on the plantation, Whitney soon learned of the workers’ plight. Eli Whitney wrote a letter to his father during his stay on the Savannah plantation and included this: …heard much said of the extreme difficulty of ginning Cotton, that is, separating it from its seeds. There were a number of very respectable Gentlemen at Mrs. Greene’s who all agreed that if a machine could be invented which would clean the cotton with expedition, it would be a great thing both to the Country and to the inventor. Involuntarily happened to be thinking on the subject and struck out a plan of a Machine in my mind (Britton 13). 

 With the current method of cleaning cotton, there involved too much hand labor. It took ten hours to clean three pounds of seed from the short-staple cotton fiber (Wilson 80). This labor-intensive and time-consuming process made growing and harvesting cotton uneconomical. Eli Whitney began working on a design immediately and studied the way that cotton was separated by hand. One hand held the seeds while the other pulled the strands of lint. His machine duplicated this theory (Wilson 80). Whitney built a crude prototype after only ten days (Britton 13). An offer of one hundred guineas was made to him for the invention, but he refused to sell. Whitney bought materials in Savannah and secretly worked in a basement from November, 1792, to April, 1793 (Britton 13). The machine consisted of a frame, a cylinder, the breastwork, the clearer, and the hopper (Britton 13). The gin had spiked teeth mounted on a boxed revolving cylinder which, when turned by a crank, pulled the cotton fiber through small slotted openings to separate the seeds from the lint. 

At the same time, a rotating brush, operated by a belt and pulleys, removed the fibrous lint from the spikes (Wilson 80). The seeds were too large to pass through the comb and were left behind. The design was not all that complicated and Whitney wrote to his father that it “will clean ten times as much cotton” as before and “the machine may be turned by water or with a horse, with the greatest ease” (Britton 13). The cotton gin allowed the seeds to be removed mechanically and rapidly, and eventually led cotton to become the cheapest and most widely used textile fabric in the world. It seems that these events would lead Eli Whitney to become quite a wealthy and powerful man, but sadly that isn’t the case. Whitney might have been naïve to trust so many people around him. 

He didn’t what the profits of his invention would amount to; he was more concerned about perfecting the idea. However, he gave a demonstration of his first model before a few of his “friends,” who were cotton planters. They witnessed the work of one day being churned out by Whitney in a mere hour (Wilson 80). Whitney said that he would patent the machine and produce a few more, but the planters were impatient. They immediately ordered huge amounts of cotton to be planted, and even Whitney’s workshop was invaded and the machine was inspected to make illegal copies (Wilson 80). Eli Whitney and Phineas Miller entered a partnership agreement on May 27, 1793 (Britton 15). This was roughly a year before Whitney actually received a patent for his invention in 1794 (Merrill 10). These two men were very optimistic about their future and Whitney began production of more gins while Miller handled the business aspects, like advertising (Britton 16). The plan was to rent the machines to the planters, instead of selling them. This was mainly because hard cash was a rare and they couldn’t afford the purchase of a machine that cost four hundred to five hundred dollars. The payment for the gins would be roughly two-fifths or forty percent of their crop (Britton 17). Whitney and Miller really didn’t know how wealthy they could become from such and enterprise and if Whitney got the patent, they could have a monopoly on the cotton ginning industry. However, planters were infuriated by such a demand, and many denied payments to Whitney and Miller. Miller’s workshop in New York was burned in a disastrous fire, and he lost parts for around twenty gins (Britton17). Whitney’s partner, Miller, had been faithful to him throughout their business venture, but scandal came about. Phineas Miller had been involved in some fraudulent land transactions dubbed the Yazoo scandals (Britton 17). This reduced Miller’s name credibility and planters refused to deal with him. With finances slowing down, Whitney’s gin production was slowed as well. Planters encouraged their own carpenters to inspect the rented gins and they begin to build models of their own (Britton 18). 

A rumor was also started that the Whitney gin damaged the cotton fibers with its spiked teeth and this drastically reduced their profits. They went to court, but the courts they entered were in cotton country (Wilson 81). In 1808, South Carolina appropriated $50,000 to Whitney for his invention. North Carolina followed with $30,000, along with contributions from other states (Merrill 11). In total, Whitney received around $90,000 for his invention, which was not enough to pay for expenses (Merrill 11). The government refused to renew the patent and even some states tried to sue Whitney after they had awarded him money (Wilson 81). He barely survived total ruin, and left the South forever. Eli Whitney was a great mind that was taken advantage of by greedy planters. He didn’t paten his later inventions and had much to do with the industrial revolution of the North. Whitney should have been one of the wealthiest men in history, and he certainly is one of the most important. Bibliography: Works Cited Britton, Karen Gerhardt. Bale o’ Cotton: The Mechanical Art of Cotton Ginning. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1992, 12-20. Merrill, Gilbert R., Macormac, Alfred R., and Mauersberger, Herbert R. American Cotton Handbook. New York: Textile Book Publishers, Inc., 1949, 10-11. Wilson, Mitchell. American Science and Invention: A Pictoral History. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1954, 78-83. -C

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