Whitney, Eli

Whitney, Eli (1765–1825), inventor and firearms manufacturer.In debt from futile litigation against piracy of his cotton‐gin patent, this Massachusetts‐born Yale alumnus (class of 1792) obtained a federal contract in 1798 to make 10,000 military muskets. Unhampered by gunsmithing experience, Whitney built a water‐powered factory in Hamden, Connecticut, where he devised production methods later adopted into “armory practice.” His initially unskilled workers used specialized jigs and fixtures to shape ostensibly uniform gun parts before fitting them together for shipment to the Springfield Armory.

Declining an offer in 1806 to head the Harpers Ferry Armory, Whitney continued to receive contract extensions despite production delays, for his persuasively expressed plan agreed with the desire of French‐influenced ordnance officers to standardize weapons. Meeting with Whitney in 1815, they established interchangeability of parts as the goal for military musket production. That required coordination of effort among Springfield, Harpers Ferry, and contractors by a system of inspection and production gauges, which did not operate effectively until the late 1840s. Despite Whitney's fame, his muskets, like others of his era, lacked interchangeable parts.
[See also Musket, Rifled.]

Bibliography

Constance McLaughlin Green , Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology, 1956.
Merritt Roe Smith , Army Ordnance and the ‘American system’ of Manufacturing, 1815–1861, in Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and Technological Change, 1985.

Carolyn C. Cooper