1765 – Whitney – bio
Eli Whitney was born in Massachusetts, USA in 1765 and is known for being the inventor of the cotton “gin”. At the time, the word “gin” was used as a short form of the word “engine”. The cotton gin is a machine that combs through cotton to separate the cotton fibers from the seeds. When cotton is picked in the fields, the fiber and seeds are collected together and prior to the invention of the cotton gin, the process of separating them was done by hand and took much longer.
Eli Whitney also did some pioneering work in using machines to create other machine parts, making them interchangeable and helping to create the machine part of the industrial age. Most of this work was done with firearms. Honore Blanc had done this previously in France and Christopher Polhem performed precision manufacturing of clock gears in Sweden in the early 1700s.
PRECURSOR:
1104 – Venetian Arsenal
1661 – Polhem
1709 – Vaucanson
1733 – Arkwright
1736 – Blanc
1769 – steam engine
CONCURRENT:
1788 – Blanchard
1791 – Babbage
1793 – cotton gin
1818 – milling machine – Johnson, Hall, North, Blanchard and maybe others…
SUBSEQUENT:
1861 – Browne and Sharpe’s milling machine
1863 – Ford
1864 – Olds
1897 – Bannow
1930 – Parsons
