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Eli Whitney: Inventor Of The Industrial Revolution

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Born on December 8th, 1795, in Westborough, Manchester, the eminent inventor of the industrial revolution, Eli Whitney was raised by farming farther, a talented mechanic and inventor himself, Eli Whitney. His mother, Elizabeth (Fay) Whitney, separated away from his family after a devastating divorce caused by his father having other women. Eli graduated from Yale college in 1792 and parted his way from his father to Georgia for occupation purposes; he accepted an invitation to live on the plantation of Catherine Greene. There, Whitney witnessed the struggles that cotton growers faced trying to make a living. Shortly after learning the issue, Eli had built his first cotton gin which he believed would help the cotton growers and gain him a business …show more content…

However, Whitney's business had an abrupt, conflicting issue with the hired planters that had resigned and made the product themselves as tax charges were unmanageable. This put the partners out of business by 1797. During this time of misfortune, Miller brought suits to solve the problem against the pirated planters however it took a till 1800 to win one suit which allowed the partners to have patent rights for their business. Due to the lack of money provided for the patent rights Whitney's business struggled to earn recompense for his invention. After the expiry date of the cotton gin's patent rights, Whitney experienced many other encounters with the business industries such as manufacturing muskets in 1798 for government purposes. Whitney's death revealed itself on January 8, 1825, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S. caused by prostate …show more content…

It enabled productivity to increase significantly, more specifically the cotton gin would generate up to fifty pounds of cleaned cotton daily from one pound daily. An important contribution to produce the cotton gin consisted of the closely time-related period of the removal of the native peoples of the southern lands (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Northern Louisiana.) When this act occurred, the land that was previously occupied by the Native Indians presented availability for white men with money and dreams such as developing or producing more cotton gins. Other acts and features (negatives and positives) of the cotton gin are; it revolutionized cotton production, was profitable for the non-wealthy to become wealthy, it fostered associated expansion of racial slavery throughout the region, shaped the nation’s economy, social and political development, lower status people were forced into slaving these companies or moving to cities to be employed in other, typically dangerous jobs

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1271 Words | 6 Pages

Born in Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8, 1765, he was the oldest child of Eli Whitney Sr. and Elizabeth Fay. At the age of 14, he was making nails in his father's workshop during the Revolutionary War. Later, he went on to invent the cotton gin to help decrease the need for slaves on cotton plantations. Ironically, this had completely the opposite effect, making cotton the cash crop of the South, and increasing the demand for slaves. While he was most famous for inventing the cotton gin, Whitney did not actually make any sizable profit from it, due to patent infringement.

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497 Words | 2 Pages

The cotton gin could remove fifty pounds worth of seeds in one day. Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794, but after only three years Eli and Phineas went out of business because many people were reluctant to pay for the cotton gins services, so it fell victim to piracy by many plantation owners and was improved for their own use. The patent laws had many loopholes and did not result in Whitneys favor. As of 1802 Whitney and Miller got about half of the money (about fifty thousand dollars that they had asked for their patent rights). During the mid nineteenth century America's leading export was cotton but, it ultimately resulted in more slaves as it was cheaper and faster to get cotton; most farmers started growing bigger crops which meant there was a need for more

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318 Words | 2 Pages

Whitney lived in New England until 1792 when he moved South. Once he got there he realized the high need for a way to separate cotton easier and faster. When he realized how difficult it was to separate the sticky seeds from the feathery cotton. Without the help of his employer, Catherine Green, he would not have altered the history forever. She financially helped him as well as morally.

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1391 Words | 6 Pages

On October 28th, 1793 he applied to get his cotton gin patented and on March 14th, 1794 it was patented. The purpose of this machine was to take out the seeds from the cotton fibers. “The impact of Whitney’s gin was vast; after its invention, the yield of raw cotton nearly doubled each decade after 1800” (Hargrett n.pag.). His machine made it so much easier for the farmers. The machine could produce up to fifty pounds of raw cotton a day versus a pound a day without the cotton gin.

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1024 Words | 5 Pages

Now the South could produce from about fifty to one hundred pounds of cotton and export most of it. With the assistance of the Eli’s invention the South grew wealthy from their cotton and made it their number one crop. That was the positive outlook, the negative part was that the North and the South started to have conflict with each other. Because the cotton gin was so successful the South needed more slave to work the machine, and this upset the North. It upset both sides so much that the South backed out from the Union and the Civil War happened.

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1523 Words | 7 Pages

It revolutionized the cotton industry by making it more profitable. A machine was now used to remove seeds from cotton rather than having to remove them by hand. This allowed more cotton to be processed quicker which made production of cotton more efficient for farmers. Prior to the invention of the cotton gin, slavery was actually dying out in the southern United States due to how labor intensive the removal of seeds from cotton had become.

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911 Words | 4 Pages

Whitney and his partner, Miller, did not intend to sell the gins. Rather, like the proprietors of grist and sawmills, they expected to charge farmers for cleaning their cotton – two-fifths of the value, paid in cotton. Resentment at this scheme, the mechanical simplicity of the device and the primitive state of patent law, made infringement inevitable. Whitney and Miller could not build enough gins to meet demand, so gins from other makers found ready sale. Ultimately, patent infringement lawsuits consumed the profits and their cotton gin company went out of business in

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664 Words | 3 Pages

Eli Whitney was born in Westborough, Massachusetts on December 8,1765. Eli had one sister and two brothers. He had trouble learning to read. He was good at math and science. He also liked fixing things and He was interested in many things.

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192 Words | 1 Pages

Henry Ford was one of the most important figures in America’s industry. He was born on July 30, 1863 close to Dearborn, Michigan. At 13, his father gave him a pocket watch which he took apart and reassembled. Because living and working on a farm did not satisfy him, Ford left home at the age of 16 and apprenticed a machinist in Detroit. After marrying Clara Ala Bryant in 1888, he was hired as an engineer for the Edison Illuminating company 3 years later and was quickly promoted to chief engineer.

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After seeing the struggle of removing the seeds, Eli decided that a machine was crucial to increase the production rate and the amount of exports. With the creation of the gin, the bar quickly rose from 1 pound of cotton to 50 pounds of cotton that could be cleaned per day. This allowed more slaves to work in the fields, rather than cleaning cotton, which resulted in the cost of cotton to decrease dramatically. Both the Northern states and Britain benefited from the growth of cotton because they could buy cotton at a cheaper price, expanding trade between them and the South. Before long, “cotton was the [official] “king” in South Carolina” and throughout the whole South (South Carolina Journey 119).

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939 Words | 4 Pages

Short-staple cotton is an extremely hardy crop so before the invention of the cotton gin, it was very difficult to make efficient money via its growth; but since fast money could be made, cotton gin usage and its economy grew rapidly. While the cotton gin could separate the fibers and the seeds, the cotton itself still had to be harvested and this led to a massive increase in slave labor and domestic slave trading between the North and the South. The slave population grew 4 times its previous size due to things like the cotton gin and the domestic slave trade; slaves were a part of Southern culture now. This plus the prior Negro Fort incident and how the government was willing to back slavery with militias, made it to where slavery was experiencing a massive boom with no regulation or end in sight. The invention of the cotton gin also increased westward expansion and industrialization in the north.

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461 Words | 2 Pages

Tobacco began to decline in value and deplete the land’s monetary worth. The fascination for cotton soared furthermore, fueling the demand for production. The concept of slaves being freed were overcome by slave owner’s avarice need for riches. In chapter 6 of our textbooks it states, “The expansion of the cotton culture led to the removal of the American

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200 Words | 1 Pages

The cotton gin is one of the early centuries’ inventions that changed world history politically, socially, and economically, for good and for worst. It is supposedly said that Eli Whitney’s invention – the cotton gin came into existence after knowing of the cotton planters’ grief of the overwhelming burdening work it was to clean cotton seeds. Having been patented in 1794, the cotton gin increased cotton production form 3000 bales annually in 1790 to 400, 000 bales of cotton annually. During this time between 300 and 1000 tons were produced per slave daily. Upon Louisiana Land purchase in 1830, 4 million bales were produced annually, consequently this made a huge contribution to the national basket.

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737 Words | 3 Pages

Soon after Whitney applied for a patent so others could not copy is new invention. Even though he received the patent in March 1794, and in addition he partnered with Phineas Miller to open a cotton gin manufacture. So far everything is sounding like it is all smooth sailing, right? Wrong, Whitney actually began to have trouble because people began to ignore the patent and began to create their own cotton gins. It took years to resolve the conflict and by the time it finally was resolved, he had began making

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1670 Words | 7 Pages

Each of these men contributed something great to the textile industry and changed how it would run from then on. Even though Samuel Slater was born and lived in England for a long period of time, he is consider to be the founder of the cotton textile industry in the United States by many economic historians. Slater was born on June 9, 1768 in Belper, Derbyshire, England and when he became old enough, he was employed as an apprentice to the owner of a textile factory. There he learned the trades of the business which would later influence his own endeavors. American inventor Eli Whitney was born on December 8, 1765 in Westborough, Massachusetts and from an early age he had an affinity for machines.

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