He was born the oldest son of a farmer. His mother and father were Eli and Elizabeth (Fay) Whitney. He had two younger brothers and a sister. They were Josiah, Ben, and Elizabeth.

Eli was a very smart child. At age eight Eli managed to take apart a watch and reassemble it successfully. At age twelve Eli was expected to take on more responsibilities, since his mother died. Eli also made a violin.

Eli's father remarried. When Eli's stepmother broke a knife, Eli was able to make her a new one. The children's stepmother treated them with little respect, even after Eli had made the knife. She did not like that they were smart and could take care of themselves.
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Eli did not have enough money to go to college, so he taught school for $7.00 a month. Eli went to Yale University at age 23, and graduated at age 27.

After school, Eli went to Georgia to study law and to teach. When he got there he stayed with General Nathanael Greene' s widow. Mrs. Greene made a statement to a guest that Eli could make a machine for cleaning cotton. He made a machine called the cotton gin by spring of 1793. It cleaned cotton as fast as fifty men.

When Eli could not make gins fast enough, people started to make imitations of his machine. Eli sued, and won. Whitney decided to try another factory in 1798. This time it was making guns. He then turned his back on cotton, the cotton gin, and the south forever.

Cotton Gin

Cotton is harvested in a seed that contains the cotton or lint. The cotton gin takes the seeds from the lint, so that the lint can be used to make cotton thread. The cotton gin was made long ago in India. In India it was called the Churcka gin. It had two rollers turned by hand, that are so close together that the seeds can not pass through.

The modern gin was made in the USA by Eli Whitney in 1794. Eli's machine had a wooden roller joined by rows of small spines, spaced half an inch apart, that passed through the bars of a metal grid. As the spines drew the lint through the grid the seeds could not pass. The spines were cleaned by a brush called the doffing brush.