Connecticut's Eli Whitney Museum Celebrates Invention and Industry

For generations, every American child has learned the story of Eli Whitney and his cotton gin. But there is much more to the famed inventor's life and his contributions to American industry, and it's all on display at the Eli Whitney Museum in Hamden, Connecticut.

Whitney's invention of the cotton gin in the early 1790s was a key development in the American industrial revolution. The device removed seeds from cotton, a process which had been painstakingly done by hand, and as a result made cotton into a highly-profitable commodity. But, while the cotton gin bolstered the economics fortunes of the American south, it also fueled the need for slave labor to grow and harvest this sudden economic windfall.

Whitney himself failed to profit from his invention due to patent issues and a plan to charge for the ginning of other people's cotton rather than the production of the device itself. But his financial hardships led to his other great invention -- the use of interchangeable parts in manufacturing.

In 1798, Whitney used his political connections to acquire a contract from the government to manufacture 10,000 muskets. Despite never having made a gun before, he built a factory at the site of the present-day museum to produce the muskets, taking advantage of the two new concepts of interchangeable parts and water-powered machinery. Over the next ten years, Whitney turned out thousands of muskets for the fledgling American military.

After Whitney's death, his nephew Eli Whitney Blake began producing guns at the factory under a contract with inventor Samuel Colt, and manufactured the famed Whitneyville Walker Colts for the Texas Rangers at the site. Later still, Whitney's grandson sold the armory to the Winchester Repeating Arms company, which continued to produce those famous guns on the site.

Though the Whitneys sold the factory, they retained the dam originally used to power the plant, and it remains in use today.

The Eli Whitney Museum was organized as part of America's Bicentennial celebration and opened in 1984. Today, it operates as both a museum and a workshop, offering hands-on experiments and experiences for young people. Permanent exhibits explore water as a tool of engineering, a model factory as operated under Whitney's innovative principles, and an extensive collection of historic guns.

But the Museum is a hub of near-constant educational activity year-round, with after school and summer programs in arts and sciences - including projects in electricity, force and motion, sound and light, natural history and aeromodeling. The outdoor water lab offers learning in the innovations that Whitney devised in the use of canals to power mills, and the scientific basis for those industrial advances.

The Eli Whitney Museum and Workshop is located at 915 Whitney Avenue in Hamden, Connecticut. It is open Wednesdays through Sundays year round.