Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology

Constance McLaughlin Green

Little, Brown, 1956 - Cotton gins and ginning - 215 pages

A series of specific challenges led Eli Whitney to exercise his ingenuity in technology and made him an engineer. His cotton gin revolutionized Southern agriculture. And the problems of manufacturing large quantities of guns drove him to develop principles important in his own time, and even more important later. The application of those principles would one day give American industry the structure within which it more than fulfilled the ambitions of the Revolutionary generation. This is the absorbing story Constance Green has told through a skillful mingling of personal narrative and technological analysis. - Editor's preface.

Contents

• Economic Problems of the United States: 3
• Yankee Youth: 19
• The Invention of the Cotton Gin: 40
• the Fight: 63
• The First Contract for Muskets: 97
• The Birth of the Uniformity System: 119
• The Last Years and Ultimate Achievements: 177
• A Note on the Sources: 197
• Acknowledgments: 205

Bibliographic information

• Title: Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology; Library of American biography; Library of American biography: Little Brown
• Author: Constance McLaughlin Green
• Publisher: Little, Brown, 1956
• Original from: Indiana University
• Digitized: Dec 19, 2008
• ISBN: 0316326216, 9780316326216
• Length: 215 pages