Informative Essay: Who Was Eli Whitney Still Alive?

Who was Eli Whitney? There isn’t exactly one answer to this question. Some would say he was a loving son and father to his kids. Or, some would say he is a grand inventor of many things. Things meaning the cotton gin and/or the musket. In the 59 years he was alive, he lead quite the life. Fun Fact: if Eli Whitney was still alive she would be 251-years-old. During Whitney’s life, many things changed in the world. In 1776, the Declaration of Independence was written. Then 12 years later, in 1789, George Washington was inaugurated and not soon after the French Revolution evolved into play. These things happened all before he was 25! If he were still alive, I bet he would have plenty stories to tell by the Christmas fires with all the little

and Elizabeth Fay. He had three siblings-two brothers (Benjamin Whitney and Josiah Whitney) and a sister (Elizabeth Whitney [Blake]) to be exact. When Whitney was a young fellow, he worked with his father a good bit. During his earlier years they worked on projects together. At the age of 15, he began to make nails and sell them. Let’s fast forward a couple years, he is a bright young man fresh out of Yale. To pay for his schooling, Whitney tutored kids on the side. I guess you could say he was using education for education! Two short years after graduating from Yale University for Law, Whitney had began to ponder on how he could make picking cotton easier for oneself when he was picking cotton. While he remembered all the things he and his father created as a boy ,he went to gather scrap metal and then ended up creating the Cotton Gin. 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