Agriculture and Farming Atlas

How The World Is Fed
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

Figure

Eli Whitney

Agricultural Mechanization

Inventor of the cotton gin of 1793, devised within months of arriving in Georgia as a young Yale graduate. The gin made him famous and nearly nothing else did him any good: patent piracy consumed the profits, and he turned to musket contracts and the pursuit of interchangeable parts. His machine's agricultural legacy, a cotton South and the expansion of slavery, outweighed his own fortunes entirely. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Birth Year
1765 1
Death Year
1825 1
Nationality
American 1
Defining Contribution
The cotton gin 1
FAQs

Did Eli Whitney profit from the cotton gin?

Very little: the gin was easily copied and his patent was hard to enforce.

Very little. Whitney patented the cotton gin in 1794, but the machine was easy to reproduce and imitations were already on the market, so he realized little profit from it. He brought at least 60 lawsuits against imitators, and his patent was validated in 1807. He then turned to manufacturing small arms under federal contract as a way of repairing his fortune.
Connections

Developed

Cotton Gin, Implements and Machines
Source Cotton Gin (Wikipedia)

Works In

Agricultural Engineering, Disciplines
Source Eli Whitney (Wikipedia)
In the Other Atlases

Nationality

United States

Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.

Source Wikidata: Eli Whitney
Sources
1. Eli Whitney (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia Foundation
  • Lead section
    Eli Whitney Jr. (December 8, 1765, January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin in 1793, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South.
  • In Group: Agricultural Inventors and Machine Designers, Lead
    (December 8, 1765, January 8, 1825) was an American inventor, widely known for inventing the cotton gin in 1793, one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution that shaped the economy of the Antebellum South.
View the Source
Wikidata: Eli Whitney
Wikidata Q280930, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source
Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.