Eli Whitney
Historians believe that one of the greatest pioneers in the birth of automation, American inventor, pioneer, mechanical engineer, and manufacturer Eli Whitney. Best remembered as the inventor of the cotton gin. He made his first violin when he was only 12. Eli started college when he was 23, in 1788. He left for Georgia and got his first look at cotton business. He graduated from Yale in 1792, and went to Savannah, Georgia to teach and study law. After he graduated he went south to tutor the children of a wealthy plantation owner. He taught school for five years. Eli Whitney made and sold nails during the Revolutionary war. In 1798 Eli obtained a government contract to make 10,000 muskets. In 1812 he was given another contract for 15,000 muskets .He built the first firearms factory to use mass production methods. When Eli Whitney built his first factory in 1798, he allocated a great deal of his precious resources to providing housing for his workers as well as ensuring that they were well off financially. This consideration marked his entire career as an industrialist. He wanted to "employ steady sober people,"tied to his factory and part of a community of industry. He intended to create a self-sufficient village, producing goods, and populated by well educated, happy workers,Whitneyville. He also affected the industrial development of the United States , in manufacturing muskets but most of whitney's own guns parts do not in fact interchange. Nevertheless, Eli Whitney is a figure whose history is fascinating, and whose impact in New Haven can not be overstated. He translated the concept of interchangeable parts into a manufacturing system, giving birth to the Americanmass-production concept. Whitney saw that a machine to clean the seed from cotton could make the South prosperous and make its inventor rich. He set to work at once and within days had drawn a sketch to explain his idea; 10 days later he constructed a crude model...
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