Eli Whitney's Biography

Eli Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts, on December 8, 1765. Eli made and fixed various machines to keep a job and paid his way through Yale University. Upon his graduation 1792, he traveled to Savana, Georgia, where to teach while studying law. On a trip South from New England, Eli made the acquaintance of another traveler, Catherine Littlefield Greene, widow of the American Revolutionary General Nathanael Greene. She told Eli the importance of Southern cotton merchants for a device to clean the cotton. Eli built a simple device that revolutionized the cotton industry. Eli also revolutionized the musket manufacturing. Eli got a contract to supply 10,000 muskets to the US government for 2 years. Due to his success in his musket making methods, Whitney is credited with pioneering the use of precise inter changable parts assembled to a final product on a production line. He helped develope the machine tool industry by inventing many of the machines required byhis new production methods.