Eli Whitney?!

H

Hueco

New member
I was reading and came across this on Ruger's site.


"An Ancient and Honorable Enterprise"
Ours is an ancient and honorable enterprise, the oldest in America. Eli Whitney's gun factory marked the beginning of interchangeable, precision manufacturing in America."

Eli Whitney -- cotton-gin Eli Whitney?! Why was this accomplishment of his never mentioned in any history books, but the cotton gin is mentioned over and over?!


Hueco
 
Funny, I read about him in a 1958 book "American Scientists and Inventors" which was translated into Russian in the late 1970s.
 
Depends on where you went to school. In Richmond, VA, we certainly read about him. It's also in how and where you research. Colt often gets credit for intechangeable gun parts, though Whitney clearly beat him to it, Ford is credited with the assemblyline, though he got teh idea in a slaugher house, and Guttenberg it credited with moveable type, though the Chinese had it centuries before he did. Did you know that the typical Sunday NY Times has more inforamtion in it than the average 17th Englishmean would encounter in his lifetime? If you like to dig, the internet is a wonderful tool, full of serendipitous little epiphanies, but it still doesn't obviate the need for a good library and real books. M2
 
In one of it's "coffee table" volumes, American Heritage Magazine dealt with Industrial Progress and Development in this country, during the 19th century. Seems like, according to them, a whole lot of this development arose from the manufacture of, you guessed it, GUNS.

Then also made considerable mention of Mr. Whitney, who during The Civil War, had a government contract for the making of rifles, the customer being The Union side.

Seems that one day, the contract administrators stopped by Whitney's plant to see what was going on. They saw people busily doing something, but they didn't recognize any of the activity as "gun making", as they knew it.

Complaining to Whitney over the seeming lack of product (rifles), Whitney walked about the shop, helping himself, seemingly at random, to bits and pieces (parts) stored in barrels, from which he assembled a rifle, much to the amazement of the inspectors.

Seems that this was a first time for the application of "interchangeable parts" in the manufacturing process, where people made the component parts of a product, rather than each person making a complete product.
 
It also depends on WHEN you when to school. Whitney standardized the parts to speed the assmbley of Commity of safety Muskets. Next thing you know they won't bother to inform students that there was a war for independance going on while Washington and a "Few Friends" had a nice camp out in Valley Forge. :rolleyes:
 
"In the early American republic, there was only a handful of skilled
machinists. Better than anyone, Whitney knew how small that
number was. He then proceeded to invent something far more
important than a machine; he invented a system of manufacture
which would permit an unskilled man to turn out a product that
would be just as good as one made by a highly trained machinist.
He put this system to work on the manufacture of rifles. Without a
factory, without even a machine, he persuaded the U. S.
government to give him an order ot ten thousand muskets at $13.40
each, to be delivered within two years. Only Whitney's prestige as
the inventor of the cotton gin could have swayed the government
to make such a commitment. From anyone other than Whitney, the
claim would have sounded insane." www.eliwhitney.org/

And that is how we got the saturday night musket. Guvmit contract. :)

[This message has been edited by G-Freeman (edited March 23, 2000).]
 
G-Freeman Thank you for mentioning the cotton gin. The parts in high speed devices such as this wear very quickly. Interchangeable parts were a must to get the whole thing going. Mass production and being able to support your customer was founded upon Mr. Whitney's ideas.
 
Hee hee...I have a student who will be happy to hear this! He is only one or two IQ points over retarded; even though he's a teenager it's a lot like having a five year old in the room. Any time I ask a question about "who did *anything*," not just invented something, or when I show an old picture of a famous person, he starts screaming "ELI WHITNEY! IT'S ELI WHITNEY!"

Maybe Mike has a point. Maybe it's just 'cos we're in Richmond. All I know is that we're reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory now and I know it will only be a matter of time before I hear that Eli Whitney invented the Everlasting Gobstopper.

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*quack*
 
I went to Catholic school til High school level, in rural Calif....we knew that. It was difficult for me to accept that Henry Ford was so "innovative" when Eli beat him by by 60-70 yrs :)

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"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes" RKBA!
 
Good point made earlier about firearms being a driving force behind MANY inventions in America (and abroad).

Sir Isaac Newton's experiments were largely centered around ballistics and how to improve the range and accuracy of canons.

The first computers were built in order to drastically reduce the time needed to perform the computations associated with long-range gunfire.

Metallurgists have done much of their work centered about how to make barrels strong without making them too stiff so as to avoid breaking.

The list is long and distinguished. And if he hadn't spent his efforts in the field of firearms (now rued greatly by the liberals running the education establishment), John Moses Browning would have long ago been recognized by the populace in general for his incredible engineering abilities.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by alan:
Seems that one day, the contract administrators stopped by Whitney's plant to see what was going on. They saw people busily doing something, but they didn't recognize any of the activity as "gun making", as they knew it.

Complaining to Whitney over the seeming lack of product (rifles), Whitney walked about the shop, helping himself, seemingly at random, to bits and pieces (parts) stored in barrels, from which he assembled a rifle, much to the amazement of the inspectors.[/quote]


I'm 50-years old and grew up in the South (GA, AL, AR). I don't know when (or where) I was taught about Eli's cotton gin and firearms manufacturing, but I did learn it in public school. I don't know if the teaching was a result of where and/or when I was in school.

I always believed the interchangeable gun parts "invention" without any reservation until I recently saw something on the History Channel. The gist of it was that when Eli went around picking up parts so he could demonstrate to inspectors that the parts were interchangeable, they really weren't. Eli pulled the wool over the eyes of government inspectors.

I don't remember too many details of the story nor whether it is true.

Joe


[This message has been edited by Numbers (edited March 25, 2000).]
 
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