Unknown_Facts_of_Eli_Whitney

Roebel History 1301 Due date 11-18-11 The interesting life of Eli Whitney When something thinks or says the Eli Whitney, you automatically think, “oh he is the guy that invented the cotton gin”. After reading the book The Life of Eli Whitney by Catherine A. Welch, I discovered many things that I had no idea about Eli Whitney and his simple yet busy way of life. One of the first things that I learned about Eli Whitney was the fact that he was oringally a Yankee! I had thought for the longest time that, since Eli Whitney had invented the cotton gins which in a way lead slavery on a little more, he had to be a southern man. Well I couldn’t have been more wrong. He was born in Massachusetts and he had spent a good majority of his life there as well. Another fun fact that crossed me while reading the book was the fact that Eli Whitney when he was a teenager, he had made nails to help him get money in his hands. I don’t think anyone would believe that a man with a Yale education and who is a world class inventor would ever have to do something like that to live. To me it was mind blowing. It kind of shows you that some of the greatest human beings can come from the poorest and low places. Yes I know I had already brought up the cotton gin in the opening statement but, while reading the book I came across a paragraph that shocked me. The article was referring to how the cotton gin had been such a major improvement and how many people believed that he was the man that sparked the American industrial. At the end of the paragraph it stated that more than 75% of American thought that Eli Whitney had invented the absolute first cotton gin. Well that’s not entirely correct. There had been many models designed before Eli Whitney’s cotton gin, but the problem was that the other inventors were trying to get way too creative. They had thought that if they used brand new technology that had just been discovered then the machine would be at the peak of development. None of those cotton gins worked out until Eli Whitney came out with his. In reality his cotton gin was extremely simple due to the fact that its basically just a big wooden barrel. I bet the other inventors were pissed. Now the most exciting thing I had learned about Eli Whitney was the fact that he made up his own musket making company after the cotton gin was obsolete and he was the first one to come up with mass producing. Eli Whitney had the idea of making muskets with his left over tools from the cotton gin company. The only thing that he would do different from the other companies was that he would have one person just build a certain part of the weapon when back in those days they would have one person make the whole musket itself. That made it nearly impossible for interchangeable parts between the muskets. That was until Eli Whitney had his great idea. All of the parts on Eli Whitney’s muskets could be put on other muskets as well. When he took his first batch of weapons to the military they were astonished to see that there was such thing of interchangeable parts on the muskets. Overall I had a lot of funny reading and learning about the life of Eli Whitney. I would never imagine that the cotton gin wasn’t just the only thing he did for the U.S and how he changed the ways of how to make weapons. Who knows what we would be today without the development and inventions of the great Eli Whitney. Bibliography Welch, Catherine A., and Tad Butler. Eli Whitney. Minneapolis, MN: Lerner, 2007.