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Eli Terry was using interchangeable parts using a milling machine as early as 1800. Ward Francillon, a horologist, concluded in a study that Terry had already accomplished interchangeable parts as early as 1800. The study examined several of Terry's clocks produced between 1800–1807. The parts were labelled and interchanged as needed.
Eli Whitney, holding a 1798 United States government contract for the manufacture of muskets, is introduced by Oliver Wolcott Jr. to the concept of interchangeable parts, an origin of the American system of manufacturing. [109]
The younger Eli was famous during his lifetime and after his death by the name "Eli Whitney", though he was technically Eli Whitney Jr. His son, born in 1820, also named Eli, was known during his lifetime and afterward by the name "Eli Whitney Jr." Whitney's mother, Elizabeth Fay, died in 1777, when he was 11. [2]
By the beginning of the Civil War, rifles with interchangeable parts had been developed, and after the war, more complex devices such as sewing machines and typewriters were made with interchangeable parts. [31] In 1798, Eli Whitney obtained a government contract to manufacture 10,000 muskets in less than two years. By 1801, he had failed to ...
A model of a 19th-century cotton gin on display at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut. A Cotton Gin—meaning "Cotton engine" [1] [2] —is a machine that quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds, enabling much greater productivity than manual cotton separation. [3]
The idea of interchangeable parts and the separate assembly line was not new, though it was little used. The idea was first developed in East Asia during the Warring States period and later the Qin dynasty over 2200 years ago – bronze crossbow triggers and locking mechanisms were mass-produced and made to be interchangeable.
However, Whitney's vision of interchangeable parts would not be achieved for over two decades with firearms and even longer for other devices. Between 1800 and 1820, new industrial tools that rapidly increased the quality and efficiency of manufacturing emerged.
Simeon North (July 13, 1765 – August 25, 1852) was an American gun manufacturer, who developed one of America's first milling machines (possibly the very first) in 1818 and played an important role in the development of interchangeable parts manufacturing.