Talk:Eli Whitney

message: Please add Whitney to the People from Worcester County, Massachusetts category. I do not have enough edits to edit this article.
--Mcfly007 (talk) 21:30, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: per request. — ¾-10 03:04, 6 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Category needs to be added

message: On Wikipedia's own List of common misconceptions page, it lists that he did not in fact invent the cotton gin, yet on this page it is in the first sentence. Someone needs some citations.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.75.248.209 (talk) 23:13, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: No such reference in made on the cited Wikipedia page.  There is no reference to cotton gin at all.   N0w8st8s (talk) 04:14, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: You are responding to a comment from 2010. - SummerPhD (talk) 04:25, 18 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Common Misconceptions

message: Hi all. With my changes of 2011-04-23 and 2011-04-24, I've now fixed all the embarrassingly wrong stuff. This includes: 
* Wikipedia no longer conflates the "Junior" issue. 
** It no longer tries to call Cotton-gin Eli (b. 1765) "Junior", because that's not how history has called him (see earlier talk thread for explanation if needed); 
** It recognizes that his son, Steel-barrel Eli (b. 1820), was in fact the one that history has long known as "Junior"; 
** It no longer conflates Eli Junior with Eli Whitney Blake, who was his cousin—not the same man; 
* It no longer tries to claim that Gribeauval "perfected" the American system (duh?!); 
* It no longer tries to fork the coverage of the details of the development of intechangeability, because that's what  is for. 
Whew! What a large load of crap cleaned up! But I am happy, because this latest iteration of article version just goes to prove once more that Wikipedia is a self-correcting mechanism, given enough time. Cheers, — ¾-10 15:26, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: PS: The cycle time could be reduced if more members of the decently educated portion of the general public would bother to participate in improving Wikipedia. It seems a little weak that, out of all the people in the world who were capable of fixing this article, it didn't get done until *I* did it. Sigh. Oh well. I'll just keep showing all y'all up. And don't fret about Wikipedia becoming too good (i.e., a scary-good free resource), because it will happen without you anyway. Welcome to the world of tomorrow! ;-) — ¾-10 15:42, 24 April 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: I've now fixed all the embarrassingly wrong stuff (2011-04-24)

message: I've removed the following line referring to the cotton gin leading to the American slave economy:
"(regardless of whether Whitney intended that or not)"
I think it was intended to point out that, though the cotton gin did indeed affect slavery, there is no reason to assume it was Whitney's intention. However, by even bringing it up, it achieves the opposite. It would be like an article on Hitler's mother that says "She gave birth to Adolf Hitler, which led directly to the Holocaust (whether she intended that or not)."
Unless there's some controversy to suggest that maybe he DID intend his invention to give a boost to the slave trade, there's no need to state it. And if that controversy exists, it should be cited.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Zegota (talk • contribs) 05:28, 29 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Unintended Consequences

message: 47.186.45.133 (talk) 23:02, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. —KuyaBriBriTalk 23:37, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 14 November 2018 

message: Paragraph 4 of the "Later life and legacy" should say "who not only" not "who only". Samwri (talk) 05:51, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
replies: text: and added an "also" in the followup clause.  –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 13:49, 30 October 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 30 October 2019 

message: As Simon Winchester chronicles in chapter four of his book, The Perfectionists, Eli Whitney received a government contract to create muskets with interchangeable parts, but had no expertise in this area and did not deliver the weapons he promised.  He deceived John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and others with a limited display.   The Wikipedia article as it stands suggests he contributed to the success of wars, when in fact he compromised soldiers and his government.  I would advocate adding excerpts from Winchester’s book. Niftwhich (talk) 03:47, 31 August 2021 (UTC)
thread_title:  Whitney’s practice of fraud upon US government 

message: There are two areas that need editing, both claims made several times in this article: 
firstly, Eli Whitney did not, in fact, invent the cotton gin.  It is now well established that he significantly improved cotton gin technology, building on earlier models at use in the South, the earliest of which stemmed from Asia and Africa   Source: Angela Lakwete, Inventing the Cotton Gin: Machine and Myth in Antebellum America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2005).
Additionally, there is no real evidence that Eli Whitney hoped that his modification of the cotton gin would reduce the South's reliance on slavery. Instead, this often repeated account appears to be a myth.  In fact, Whitney spent considerable time in Georgia as a tutor (as mentioned in the article), working on a plantation which used slave labor, where he became aware of the stopgap in cotton processing, which he sought to alleviate. 
Source:
Hatfield, Edward. "Eli Whitney in Georgia." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Oct 31, 2018. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/eli-whitney-in-georgia/ 
and also
“Eli Whitney's Patent for the Cotton Gin,” National Archives
https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/cotton-gin-patent
There doesn't seem to be any evidence that Whitney was disturbed by slavery in any way.  Instead, his invention was intended to speed up the processing of cotton, a job done by enslaved labor. He wrote to his father in Sept 11, 1793 that he had perfected a device by which “one man will clean ten times as much cotton as he can in any other way before known.”
Source: “Correspondence of Eli Whitney Relative to the Invention of the Cotton Gin.” The American Historical Review 3, no. 1 (1897): 90–127, p. 100 https://doi.org/10.2307/1832812.
That same year, in a Nov 24 1793 letter to Thomas Jefferson, Whitney wrote about how he hoped to improve the speed of cotton processing, because currently, “it is the stated task of one negro to clean fifty weight (I mean fifty pounds after it is separated from the seed), of the green seed cotton per day.”
“Correspondence of Eli Whitney Relative to the Invention of the Cotton Gin.” The American Historical Review 3, no. 1 (1897): 90–127, p. 100, fn. 1.  https://doi.org/10.2307/1832812.
These letters suggest that Whitney hoped to increase the rapidity of cotton processing, while fully aware that this was a task consigned to slaves. Wansin457 (talk) 17:33, 15 December 2022 (UTC)
replies: text: Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. RealAspects (talk) 13:57, 17 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Semi-protected edit request on 15 December 2022 

message: Please remove the beginning line of the second paragraph that says "Whitney himself believed that his invention would reduce the need for enslaved labor and help hasten the end of southern slavery." The claim cites this site which has since been deleted, likely because it's incorrect. There's no evidence I could find online that Eli Whitney planned to end slavery with the cotton gin beyond this source and the wikipedia which references this source. Instead, I found an overwhelming number of sources listing his motivation as cash, hoping to patent the cotton gin. Please delete the inaccurate claim for me as I don't have the valid permissions (I think). Troglodyte8 (talk) 17:53, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Crazy claim without source 

message: I didn’t see anything on this 47.5.105.168 (talk) 16:16, 26 April 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gun making?