Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney Jr. was an American inventor and engineer, born in Massachusetts and a graduate of Yale College in 1792, whose cotton gin transformed the processing of cotton in the American South. His machine used a wooden drum studded with hooks that pulled cotton fibers through a fine mesh, separating the fiber from its seeds far faster than hand labor and allowing a single machine to clean up to 55 pounds of cotton a day; he patented the device in 1794, and its efficiency made upland cotton highly profitable across the South, though historians note this same profitability entrenched and expanded slave labor rather than reducing the need for it. Whitney later turned to firearms manufacturing, where he championed, though did not originate, the concept of interchangeable standardized parts for muskets under government contracts beginning in 1798, and he introduced early cost-accounting methods into his manufacturing operations, though full interchangeability in his own factory was not achieved until after his death. He died in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1825 and was later inducted into the Hall of Fame for Great Americans.