Chapter 6: Eli Whitney and the Cotton Gin – Flashcards

Whitney created his first cotton gin with a hopper to hold the cotton. On one side of the devise, iron bars were placed close together, and a wooden cylinder covered with rows of wire teeth would grab the cotton in the hopper and push it through the bars; brushes removed the excess cotton from the wire teeth, and the small seeds dropped into a trough. Mr. Miller became Eli's partner by supplying the money to patent, build, and sell the new machine.

It was hard for Miller and Whitney to succeed in their new business because they wanted to make a lot of money quickly. They decided they would be the only ones to makes the gins; plus they wanted to charge one pound for every three pounds of cotton that the farmers cleaned.

Hodgen Holmes took out a patent on the "saw gin," which used a type of circular saw instead of wire teeth to clean the cotton. Eli brought suit against Homes because the "saw gin" was a copy of Whitney's cotton gin.

Eli Whitney devised a way for rifle parts to be made by machines. The parts made by the machines could replace damaged rifle parts more efficiently. Before Mr. Whitney created this method, all the work was done by the skillful hands of various craftsmen. Even so, replacement parts did not always fit properly. Mr. Whitney invented powerful machines to cut, file, drill, and bore; he divided the making of a rifle into a hundred different parts, and broke this down into simple steps. All was done according to a set pattern so each part was exactly alike and could be replaced at a slight cost. The system of manufacturing that Whitney brought to the United States was dividing the manufacturing of parts into single steps so that workmen needed little skill to do any of the steps. Each part was made after a pattern; and machines were used to make replacement parts that were exactly alike.

dull teeth

cotton

manufacturing rifles

making nails

Connecticut

India

India

Yale

manufacturing rifles