Eli Whitney

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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 ...

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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.


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