Eli Whitney

Paper Summary:

The paper reveals that, while Whitney is remembered primarily for his cotton gin, many historians credit him with other significant contributions in labor and operations management. The paper outlines Whitney's early life and development and shows how his invention of the cotton gin contributed to the slave trade and the resulting Civil War. The paper also discusses Whitney's contribution to firearms design, manufacture and production and then looks at his later years and his other accomplishments.

Outline:
Introduction
Early Life and Development
The Cotton Gin
The Larger Impact of a Simple Technological InventionWeapons Manufacturing and Other Important Contributions of Eli Whitney
Conclusion - Later Life and Legacy

From the Paper:

"Eli Whitney is widely remembered in American History, primarily for his late 18th century invention of the cotton engine or "gin," as it came to be known. In retrospect, the cotton gin transformed the economic portrait of the nascent United States and may have, unintentionally established the demand for slaves in the U.S., leading the country into its most shameful period of history. Even greater is evident in Whitney's nearly simultaneous contribution to firearms design, manufacture, and production, because barely fifty years later, the product of Whitney's first major technological success would trigger a war that shaped American society and culture thereafter, fought with battlefield weapons produced en masse, in quantities that contributed greatly to the tragic numbers of casualties of the American Civil War (Nevins & Commager 1992)."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Evans, H. (2004) They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine - Two Centuries of Innovators. New York: Little Brown & Co.
• Friedman, L. M. (2005) A History of American Law. New York: Simon & Schuster.
• Gray, I. (1987) General and Industrial Management. (Revised from Fayol's Original) Belmont: David S. Lake Publishers.
• Hounshell, D. (1984) From the American System to Mass Production, 1800-1932: The Development of Manufacturing Technology in the United States. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University
• Lakwete, A. (2004). Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University.

More papers on Eli Whitney:

• Term Paper # 144882 : "Invention of the Assembly Line"
• Term Paper # 93842 : "Cotton Gin"
• Essay # 23262 : "Cotton Gin in America"

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