Born December 8, 1765 (Westborough, Massachusetts)

Died January 8, 1825 (New Haven, Connecticut)

Inventor, engineer, manufacturer

Eli Whitney is one of the most influential inventors in American history. Though most noted for inventing the cotton gin, he made his greatest contribution to industry by creating a manufacturing process for making muskets (firearms) with interchangeable parts. A part from one musket could fit any other musket he made. Whitney revolutionized industrial production by establishing the basis for the future assembly line and modern mass production. He was a pioneer in creating machine tools, which could make each part of a musket separately with consistent precision. With this new manufacturing process, unskilled workers could mass-produce items that were previously made very slowly by individual skilled craftsmen.

The cotton gin, on the other hand, was a mechanically simple device. Therefore, its importance was more in the social and economic realm. The cotton gin...