40 Fun Facts About Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney said which animal, clawing at a chicken through a fence, inspired his cotton gin?

A cat gave him the idea, by Whitney's own telling: its paw came back through the fence holding only feathers, just as the gin's hooks drag lint through slots too narrow for the seeds.

The 'gin' in Eli Whitney's cotton gin has nothing to do with the drink; it is short for which word?

Engine was already being clipped to 'gin' in medieval English, where the short form meant any clever device, so a cotton gin is simply a cotton machine.

During the Revolutionary War, teenage Eli Whitney ran a profitable workshop business making what?

Nails were scarce while the war cut off British imports, so 14-year-old Whitney forged them in his father's farm workshop and sold them at a profit.

Eli Whitney's first gin cleaned about fifty pounds of cotton a day; how much could one worker clean by hand?

One pound a day was the old hand rate for upland cotton, whose seeds cling tightly to the fibre. A fifty-fold jump is why planters began copying the gin before the patent was even issued.

In which Southern state was Eli Whitney a plantation guest for only a few months when he built his cotton gin?

Georgia was his home for only a few months, yet the model he built near Savannah in 1793 made upland cotton pay, and it soon replaced indigo as the region's main cash crop.

With his cotton gin profits lost to court battles, Eli Whitney won a 1798 government contract to make 10,000 what?

Muskets were new to Whitney, who had never made a gun when he signed. The order he promised in about two years took him roughly a decade to deliver.

By making slave-grown cotton hugely profitable, Eli Whitney's gin is often called an indirect cause of which war?

The American Civil War came after decades in which the gin made cotton the South's chief source of wealth, while the enslaved population grew from about 700,000 in 1790 to 3.2 million by 1850.

Which university's program for non-traditional students is named for Eli Whitney, who enrolled there at 23?

Yale took Whitney in 1789 after he spent years saving for the fees as a farm laborer, and he finished the degree in just three years.

Eli Whitney's gin sped up cleaning cotton, but which job stayed slow handwork until machines arrived in the 1930s?

Picking became the new bottleneck: the gin could clean far more cotton than hands could gather, so planters bought more enslaved workers to bring in the crop.

Which manufacturing idea did gunmaker Eli Whitney champion, though he is often wrongly credited with inventing it?

Interchangeable parts had been pursued by European gunsmiths decades earlier, and rival New England armories got there first; Whitney's own works managed it only after his death in 1825.

Eli Whitney's birthplace, the farm town of Westborough, lies in which New England state?

Massachusetts claims him by birth: Whitney grew up on the family farm in Westborough, though he spent his working life in Connecticut and is buried there.

Which member of George Washington's cabinet wrote to Eli Whitney in 1793 that his gin patent only awaited a model?

Thomas Jefferson, as Secretary of State, handled patent applications himself, and he approved Whitney's in November 1793, months before the paperwork was finally issued.

Which Revolutionary War general's widow invited Eli Whitney to stay at her plantation, where he built the cotton gin?

Nathanael Greene had been given the estate by the state as thanks for his Southern campaign; after his death in 1786 his widow Catharine ran it and backed Whitney's experiments.

What job was new graduate Eli Whitney sailing south to take in 1792 when a plantation invitation changed his plans?

Private tutor was the post he had been promised, but it fell through when he arrived, leaving him short of money and free to tinker on his hostess's estate.

At the age of 12, long before the cotton gin, Eli Whitney is said to have built which musical instrument?

A violin was an ambitious build for a farm boy of 12, and soon afterwards he was running his own small forge and paying a helper.

The Eli Whitney Museum also honors toymaker A. C. Gilbert, best known for inventing which construction toy?

Erector Set suits the museum's hands-on spirit: it stands on the site of Whitney's old gun factory in Connecticut and runs building workshops for children.

Which revolver maker hired the armory founded by Eli Whitney to build his 1847 Walker pistols for the army?

Samuel Colt was restarting his business, so Whitney's son built the first thousand Walkers; Colt then bought the tooling to open his own factory in Hartford.

In 1940 the United States commemorated Eli Whitney and his cotton gin on which everyday item?

A postage stamp honored Whitney in 1940, part of a 35-stamp set saluting famous American authors, artists, scientists and inventors.

How was Eli Whitney's small original cotton gin powered, before larger versions were hitched to horses?

A hand crank turned the first model, a box small enough for one person to work; with a horse hitched to a bigger one, Whitney boasted to his father, it could outdo fifty men.

A war scare with which country in 1798 led the U.S. government to order thousands of guns from Eli Whitney?

France and the United States seemed close to war, so Congress set aside $800,000 for arms; full-scale war was averted, but Whitney kept the contract and profited handsomely.

What was the name of the rice plantation, once seized from a Loyalist official, where Eli Whitney built his cotton gin?

Mulberry Grove began as a silk-raising venture with a nursery of mulberry trees; today only a bronze marker shows where the estate stood.

Eli Whitney's wife Henrietta, whom he married in 1817, was a granddaughter of which famed colonial evangelist?

Jonathan Edwards's family sat at the top of Connecticut society: Henrietta's father was a federal judge, a useful tie for a manufacturer who lived on government contracts.

Eli Whitney's nephew and manager Eli Whitney Blake reached the National Inventors Hall of Fame for which machine?

Stone crusher is the short name for the Blake stone breaker of 1857, devised when he was put in charge of paving city streets; earlier he had helped his uncle organize the gun factory.

Which rival gunmaker bought Eli Whitney's old armory from his son in 1888 and promptly closed it down?

Winchester bought the works from Whitney's ageing son after about 90 years of gunmaking, shut it at once and shelved its designs behind its own patents.

Eli Whitney lies in the same Connecticut cemetery as which inventor of vulcanized rubber?

Charles Goodyear rests in the same cemetery as Whitney, and so does the dictionary maker Noah Webster, a remarkable gathering of American ingenuity in one burial ground.

What disaster destroyed Eli Whitney's first cotton gin factory in Connecticut in March 1795?

A fire burned the works to the ground, and with court cases over copied gins draining what was left, Whitney was on the verge of bankruptcy by the late 1790s.

Which plantation manager, a fellow New Englander, became Eli Whitney's business partner in the cotton gin venture?

Phineas Miller offered to pay the whole expense of the experiment in return for a share of the profits, and he later married the widow who owned the estate.

Historian Joseph Roe credited Eli Whitney with building the first of which workshop tool for shaping metal around 1818?

Milling machine credit has since been shared out: later historians found several of his contemporaries building them between 1814 and 1818, with others mattering more than Whitney.

Which Treasury Secretary received Eli Whitney's 1798 proposal to mass-produce guns for the U.S. government?

Oliver Wolcott Jr. was a fellow graduate of Whitney's college, and he later sent the inventor a foreign pamphlet on arms making that shaped how Whitney pitched his factory.

The Eli Whitney Museum stands on the site of Whitney's old gun factory in which Connecticut town?

Hamden still has a neighborhood called Whitneyville, which began as the factory village where his unmarried workers boarded.

Which profession did Eli Whitney plan to enter after college, before a machine for cleaning cotton changed his course?

The law was the career he had in mind, and he agreed to read for it while a guest on the plantation; instead he spent the winter tinkering in a workshop.

Which older Southern cash crop, hurt by over-supply and worn-out soil, was losing its profit when Eli Whitney arrived?

Tobacco had exhausted the soil and glutted its market, so planters wanted a new staple; within a few years of the gin, upland cotton had taken its place.

Simple roller gins cleaned cotton centuries before Eli Whitney in which country, home of the churka?

India had single-roller gins by the fifth century, shown in the Ajanta cave paintings; they suited long-staple cotton, so the clinging seeds of the upland kind needed Whitney's new design.

In Eli Whitney's cotton gin, what was fitted to a second rotating cylinder to clear the cleaned lint off the teeth?

Brushes on the second cylinder stopped the machine jamming; an 1883 article credited the idea to Whitney's hostess, though it named no source for the claim.

Rival gin maker Hodgen Holmes won a 1796 patent by replacing the wire spikes of Eli Whitney's design with what?

Circular saws are still what modern gin stands use, yet the courts annulled the rival patent and declared Whitney the inventor.

Which steamboat pioneer said that Arkwright, Watt and Eli Whitney did the most for mankind of any men of their time?

Robert Fulton put the Connecticut gunmaker beside two Britons whose spinning frame and steam power drove the Industrial Revolution.

Who opposed Eli Whitney's wish to attend college, so that he had to earn the fees himself as a farm laborer?

His stepmother's objection set him back years: Whitney's own mother had died when he was 11, and he was well into his twenties before he could enroll.

Eli Whitney's son created Lake Whitney in 1860, which became the first public reservoir for which Connecticut city?

New Haven drew on the lake for well over a century; it formed behind the dam on the Mill River that had powered his father's gun factory.

Which illness killed Eli Whitney in 1825, after he reportedly built his own devices to ease the pain?

Prostate cancer struck within a few years of his late marriage, and he spent his last years studying the disease, dying a month after his 59th birthday.

Eli Whitney left college in 1792 as a member of which academic honor society, founded in 1776?

Phi Beta Kappa is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and Whitney made the cut despite a late start and a degree finished in three years.