| (1756
- 1825) |
| Inducted: |
1975 |
| Region: |
MidWest |
| Industry: |
Inventor
Agriculture |
|
On a visit to Georgia in 1773, Eli Whitney was so impressed by the difficulty and cost of cleaning seeds out of short-staple cotton, that he invented the cotton gin to make the process easier. His machine enabled one operator to clean as much cotton as 50 could have done before, making southern cotton a profitable crop for the first time. In 1792, the year before his invention, the U.S. exported only 138,000 pounds of cotton; by 1800 it was exporting 18 million pounds. Whitney also pioneered the use of interchangeable parts, allowing workers without specialized skills to produce standardized parts to exact specifications. |
