Eli Whitney
By 1790 slavery was on the decline in America. Apart from tobacco, rice, and a special strain of cotton that could be grown only in very few places, the South really had no money crop to export. Tobacco was a land waster, depleting the soil within very few years. Land was so cheap that tobacco planters never bothered to reclaim the soil by crop rotation -- they simply found new land farther west. The other crops -- rice, indigo, corn, and some wheat -- made for no great wealth. Slaves cost something, not only to buy but to maintain, and some Southern planters thought that conditions had reached a point where a slave's labor no longer paid for his care. came to the south in 1793, ...
Want to read the rest of this paper? Join Essayworld today to view this entire essay and over 50,000 other term papers
|
in the country.
In his early twenties, Whitney became determined to attend Yale College. Since Yale was mostly a school for law or theology, his parents objected. How could Yale College help enhance his mechanical talents? Finally, at the age of twenty-three, Whitney became a student at Yale. By this time, he seemed almost middle-aged to his classmates. After he graduated with his degree in 1792, he found that no jobs were available to a man with his talents. He eventually settled for teaching, and accepted a job as a tutor in South Carolina, his salary was promised to be one hundred guineas a year.
He sailed on a small coasting packet with only a few passengers, among whom was the widow of the Revolutionary general, Nathanael Greene. The Greenes had settled in Savannah after the war. When Whitney arrived in South Carolina, he found that the promised salary was going to be halved. He not only refused to take the position, but decided to give up teaching all together. Coming to ...
Get instant access to over 50,000 essays. Write better papers. Get better grades.
Already a member? Login
|
To take the place of a hand holding the seed, he made a sort of sieve of wires stretched lengthwise. It took longer to make the wire than it did to string it; the proper kind of wire was nonexistent. To do the work of the fingers which pulled out the lint, Whitney had a drum rotate past the sieve almost touching it. On the surface of the drum there were small, hook-shaped wires projecting out that caught the lint from the seed. The wires on the sieve held the seeds back while the lint was pulled away. A brush, which rotated four times as fast as the drum, cleaned off the lint from the hooks. That was all there was to Whitney's cotton gin. It never became more complicated than that.
...
Succeed in your coursework without stepping into a library. Get access to a growing library of notes, book reports, and research papers in 2 minutes or less.
|
CITE THIS PAGE:
Eli Whitney. (2007, November 14). Retrieved November 23, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Eli-Whitney/74322
"Eli Whitney." Essayworld.com. Essayworld.com, 14 Nov. 2007. Web. 23 Nov. 2024. <http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Eli-Whitney/74322>
"Eli Whitney." Essayworld.com. November 14, 2007. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Eli-Whitney/74322.
"Eli Whitney." Essayworld.com. November 14, 2007. Accessed November 23, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Eli-Whitney/74322.
|