The_Gin

Eli Whitney Eli Whitney was born December 8, 1765 in Westboro, Massachusetts and died on January 8, 1825. He graduated from Yale College in 1792. He graduated at the top of his class. When he was old enough to work, he worked hard. Eli Whitney was a very important person back then. He had many jobs and responsibilities. Most people knew him for inventing the Cotton Gin. That’s when he became famous because farmers no longer had to do it their selves and could use a high class machine instead. A Cotton Gin is a type of machinery that cleaned away the seeds from cotton and grabbed the seeds so that people did not have to pick them. It separated the fiber from the seed. Whitney saw that a machine to clean the seed from cotton could make the South go wild and make its inventor rich. He is not just an inventor of the Cotton Gin but was an inventor of many other things too. Whitney was also a Pioneer, Mechanical Engineer, and a Manufacturer. He also affected industrial development of the United States by manufacturering muskets for the government. That was in 1798, when Whitney invented the way to manufacture muskets by machine so that the parts were interchangeable. It was as a manufacturer of muskets that Whitney finally became rich. Back to where his Cotton Gin was created, there was some minor problems. When Eli Whitney and his business partner Phineas Miller had decided to get into the ginning business themselves. They made as many cotton gins as possible and put them in throughout Georgia and the other southern states around. They charged farmers an unusual fee for doing the ginning for them. This is where it got ugly. Farmers throughout Georgia ignored having to go to Whitney's cotton gins where they had to pay what they said as a horrible tax. Instead planters began making their own versions of Whitney's Cotton Gin and saying “they were their new inventions.” Miller, Whitney’s partner was constantly against the owners of these other bad versions but because of a wind up in the wording of the 1793 Patent Act, they were unable to win any trials until 1800, when the law was changed finally. He was an important man but then again he was some what hated at times for his outrageous taxation on his Cotton Gin Industry. So as you can tell, if it was not for Eli Whitney we would not have a high class machine to pick the seeds from cotton and we would still might be out there picking it out self. So really Eli Whitney is a kind of hero in a way.