What was Eli Whitney best known for?
The third best known American inventor of the pre-atomic age, after Thomas Edison and Alexander Graham Bell, is probably Eli Whitney. Whitney certainly transformed the economies of the antebellum North and South. But among invention aficionados, his invention of the cotton gin is a matter of some dispute. Whitney was born in Westboro, Massachusetts in 1765. As a child, he showed an instinct and talent for machinery. He worked as a blacksmith, and invented a nail-making machine. Whitney’s dream of attending Yale College was frustrated for some years, because no college then taught or much appreciated the “useful arts.” But Whitney did attend Yale, and graduated at the age of 27, only to find that there were no jobs for engineers either. So he accepted a teaching position in South Carolina. En route, in early 1793, Whitney was befriended by Katherine Greene, the widow of a Revolutionary War general. When Whitney’s teaching job later fell through, Greene invited him to stay at her plantat
