Eli Whitney's Inventions

Eli Whitney was a very innovative man whose inventions led to the mass production of cotton throughout the south. Making it much easier for it to be picked and cleaned for sale to northern textile industries. Eli Whitney was an American inventor who created the cotton gin and pushed the interchangeable parts mode of production. By the mid-19th century, cotton had become America’s leading export.In 1794, Eli Whitney patented the cotton gin, a machine that revolutionized the production of cotton by greatly speeding up the process of removing seeds from cotton fiber. The cotton gin made it easier for the farmers to separate cotton fibers from their seeds, allowing for much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. After the invention of the cotton gin, the yield of raw cotton doubled each decade after 1800.(eliwhitney.org). At mid century the South provided three-fifths of America's exports, most of it in cotton. Without the cotton gin the expansion of slavery throughout the south would’ve came to a halt. Cotton growing became so profitable for the planters that it greatly increased their demand for both land and …show more content…
This is the system of creating identical parts that can be easily mass produced and replaced.These parts can then be put together to create various products such as firearms and furniture. This process transformed America from an artisan-based nation to an unskilled, assembly line style producer(nvaughn.weebly.com).Eli mainly demonstrated this with the production of weapons.Even taking ten rifles in front of congress disassembling them, mixing all the parts together, and then putting them back together. It did however increase productivity and eased cost of American expansion, but at the same time losing much of the nation’s skilled craftsmen.While contributing to the Industrial Revolution, Whitney’s idea of interchangeable parts also diminished America’s skilled craftsmen