Engineer Eli Whitney died 35 years before the Civil War, but his most famous invention, the cotton gin, set the economic stage for war. Whitney's gin made cotton production far more efficient ...

click image for close-up In October of 1793, Eli Whitney sent a drawing of his new invention, the cotton gin, to Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson in application for a patent. Jefferson replied ...

As schoolchildren, we learned the names of famous inventors from history: Alexander Graham Bell, Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison. Ask someone to name a famous modern-day inventor, though, and you’ll ...

Whitney would become a familiar name in American history books for his inventions. A small plaque now sits in front of a classic white farmhouse in a quiet residential neighborhood on Eli Whitney ...

If you went to elementary school in the United States, you no doubt learned about Eli Whitney’s cotton gin ... and became famous for his labor-saving invention. He would go on to pioneer the ...