We left Eli Whitney defeated in his efforts to divert to himself some adequate share of the untold riches arising from his great invention of the cotton gin.Whitney, however, had other sources of profit in his own character and mechanical ability.As early as 1798 he had turned his talents to the manufacture of firearms.
He had established his shops at Whitneyville, near New Haven; and it was there that he worked out another achievement quite as important economically as the cotton gin, even though the immediate consequences were less spectacular: namely, the principle of standardization or interchangeability in manufacture.
This principle is the very foundation today of all American large-scale production.The manufacturer produces separately thousands of copies of every part of a complicated machine, confident that an equal number of the complete machine will be assembled and set in motion.The owner of a motor car, a reaper, a tractor, or a sewing machine, orders, perhaps by telegraph or telephone, a broken or lost part, taking it for granted that the new part can be fitted easily and precisely into the place of the old.
Though it is probable that this idea of standardization, or interchangeability, originated independently in Whitney's mind, and though it is certain that he and one of his neighbors, who will be mentioned presently, were the first manufacturers in the world to carry it out successfully in practice, yet it must be noted that the idea was not entirely new.We are told that the system was already in operation in England in the manufacture of ship's blocks.From no less an authority than Thomas Jefferson we learn that a French mechanic had previously conceived the same idea.* But, as no general result whatever came from the idea in either France or England, the honors go to Whitney and North, since they carried it to such complete success that it spread to other branches of manufacturing.And in the face of opposition.
When Whitney wrote that his leading object was "to substitute correct and effective operations of machinery for that skill of the artist which is acquired only by long practice and experience," in order to make the same parts of different guns "as much like each other as the successive impressions of a copper-plate engraving," he was laughed to scorn by the ordnance officers of France and England."Even the Washington officials,"says Roe, "were sceptical and became uneasy at advancing so much money without a single gun having been completed, and Whitney went to Washington, taking with him ten pieces of each part of a musket.He exhibited these to the Secretary of War and the army officers interested, as a succession of piles of different parts.
Selecting indiscriminately from each of the piles, he put together ten muskets, an achievement which was looked on with amazement."*** See the letter from Jefferson to John Jay, of April 30, 1785, cited in Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p.129.
** Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p.133.
While Whitney worked out his plans at Whitneyville, Simeon North, another Connecticut mechanic and a gunmaker by trade, adopted the same system.North's first shop was at Berlin.He afterwards moved to Middletown.Like Whitney, he used methods far in advance of the time.Both Whitney and North helped to establish the United States Arsenals at Springfield, Massachusetts, and at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in which their methods were adopted.
Both the Whitney and North plants survived their founders.Just before the Mexican War the Whitney plant began to use steel for gun barrels, and Jefferson Davis, Colonel of the Mississippi Rifles, declared that the new guns were "the best rifles which had ever been issued to any regiment in the world." Later, when Davis became Secretary of War, he issued to the regular army the same weapon.
The perfection of Whitney's tools and machines made it possible to employ workmen of little skill or experience."Indeed so easy did Mr.Whitney find it to instruct new and inexperienced workmen, that he uniformly preferred to do so, rather than to combat the prejudices of those who had learned the business under a different system."* This reliance upon the machine for precision and speed has been a distinguishing mark of American manufacture.A man or a woman of little actual mechanical skill may make an excellent machine tender, learning to perform a few simple motions with great rapidity.
* Denison Olmstead, "Memoir", cited by Roe, p.159.
Whitney married in 1817 Miss Henrietta Edwards, daughter of Judge Pierpont Edwards, of New Haven, and granddaughter of Jonathan Edwards.His business prospered, and his high character, agreeable manners, and sound judgment won.for him the highest regard of all who knew him; and he had a wide circle of friends.
It is said that he was on intimate terms with every President of the United States from George Washington to John Quincy Adams.
But his health had been impaired by hardships endured in the South, in the long struggle over the cotton gin, and he died in 1825, at the age of fifty-nine.The business which he founded remained in his family for ninety years.It was carried on after his death by two of his nephews and then by his son, until 1888, when it was sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven.
Here then, in these early New England gunshops, was born the American system of interchangeable manufacture.Its growth depended upon the machine tool, that is, the machine for making machines.Machine tools, of course, did not originate in America.
