Eli Whitney

Eli Whitney Born December 8, 1765 - Died January 8, 1825. An american inventor, Eli Whitney created the first [cotton gin]? in 1793, which removed the seeds from cotton, which until that time was extremely labor intensive. While under contract with the U.S. Government to create rifles, he took the idea of interchangable parts, and created the first assembly line, the concept of which was full exploited by Ford and others in industry.

Born in Westboro, Massachusetts, he graduated from Yale College in 1792. While his ideas should have made him verry rich, they were so easy to understand and reproduce that the concepts and designed were pirated by others, that Whitney's company that produced cotton gins went out of business in 1797. He never patented his later inventions, one of which was a milling machine.