专八人文知识需知的美国名人--伊莱·惠特尼

2015-05-19 10:50:02来源:网络

专八人文知识需知的美国名人--伊莱·惠特尼

  英语专八人文知识涵盖的知识面较广,考生们需要平时多积累小常识,这样在专八考试中才能游刃有余,新东方在线整理了专八人文知识需知的美国名人系列知识点供考生们参考。

  伊莱·惠特尼(1765年12月8日-1825年1月8日)美国人,英文名:Eli Whitney。是活跃于美国18世纪末至19世纪初的一位发明家、机械工程师和企业家,轧花机的发明者,在管理思想方法也作出了贡献。

  His gin made cotton king and sustained an empire for slavery.

  他的扎棉机造就了棉花王国并维持了奴隶的帝国。

  Eli Whitney (December 8, 1765 – January 8, 1825) was anAmerican inventor best known for inventing the cotton gin. Thiswas one of the key inventions of the Industrial Revolution and shaped the economy of theantebellum South.[1] Whitney's invention made short staple cotton into a profitable crop, whichstrengthened the economic foundation of slavery. Despite the social and economic impact of hisinvention, Whitney lost his profits in legal battles over patent infringement, closed his business andnearly filed for bankruptcy.

  Career inventions

  Cotton gin

  The cotton gin is a mechanical device which removes the seeds from cotton, a process which hadbeen extremely labor intensive. The word 'gin' is short for engine. The cotton gin was a woodendrum stuck with hooks which pulled the cotton fibers through a mesh. The cotton seeds wouldnot fit through the mesh and fell outside. Whitney occasionally told a story where he waspondering an improved method of seeding the cotton and he was inspired by observing a catattempting to pull a chicken through a fence, and could only pull through some of the feathers.

  A single cotton gin could generate up to 55 pounds of cleaned cotton daily. This contributed tothe economic development of the Southern states of the United States, a prime cotton growingarea; some historians believe that this invention allowed for the African slavery system in theSouthern United States to become more sustainable at a critical point in its development.

  Whitney received a patent (later numbered as X72) for his cotton gin on March 14, 1794;however, it was not validated until 1807. Whitney and his partner Miller did not intend to sell thegins. Rather, like the proprietors of grist and sawmills, they expected to charge farmers for cleaningtheir cotton - two-fifths of the value, paid in cotton. Resentment at this scheme, the mechanicalsimplicity of the device and the primitive state of patent law, made infringement inevitable. Whitneyand Miller could not build enough gins to meet demand, so gins from other makers found readysale. Ultimately, patent infringement lawsuits consumed the profits and their cotton gin companywent out of business in 1797. One oft-overlooked point is that there were drawbacks to Whitney'sfirst design. There is significant evidence that the design flaws were solved by a woman namedKatherine Green; Whitney gave her no public credit or recognition.

  While the cotton gin did not earn Whitney the fortune he had hoped for, it did give him fame.

  And the cotton gin transformed Southern agriculture and the national economy. Southern cottonfound ready markets in Europe and in the burgeoning textile mills of New England. Cotton exportsfrom the U.S. boomed after the cotton gin's appearance - from less than 500,000 pounds in 1793to 93 million pounds by 1810. Cotton was a staple that could be stored for long periods andshipped long distances, unlike most agricultural products. It became the U.S.'s chief export,representing over half the value of U.S. exports from 1820 to 1860.

  Paradoxically, the cotton gin, a labor-saving device, helped preserve slavery in the U.S. Before the1790s, slave labor was primarily employed in growing rice, tobacco, and indigo, none of whichwere especially profitable any more. Neither was cotton, due to the difficulty of seed removal. Butwith the gin, growing cotton with slave labor became highly profitable - the chief source of wealthin the American South, and the basis of frontier settlement from Georgia to Texas. "King Cotton"became a dominant economic force, and slavery was sustained as a key institution of Southernsociety.

  Milling machine

  Machine tool historian Joseph W. Roe credited Whitney with inventing the first milling machine.Subsequent work by other historians (Woodbury, Smith, Muir) suggests that Whitney was amonga group of contemporaries all developing milling machines at about the same time (1814 to 1818).Therefore, no one person can properly be described as the inventor of the milling machine.

  Later life and legacy

  Despite his humble origins, Whitney was keenly aware of the value of social and politicalconnections. In building his arms business, he took full advantage of the access that his status as aYale alumnus gave him to other well-placed graduates, such as Secretary of War Oliver Wolcott(Class of 1778) and New Haven developer and political leader James Hillhouse.

  His 1817 marriage to Henrietta Edwards, granddaughter of the famed evangelist JonathanEdwards, daughter of Pierpont Edwards, head of the Democratic Party in Connecticut, and firstcousin of Yale's president, Timothy Dwight, the state's leading Federalist, further tied him toConnecticut's ruling elite. In a business dependent on government contracts, such connectionswere essential to success.

  Whitney died at age 59 of prostate cancer on January 8, 1825, in New Haven, Connecticut,leaving a widow and four children. During the course of his illness, he invented and constructedseveral devices to mechanically ease his pain. These devices, drawings of which are in his collectedpapers, were effective but were never manufactured for use of others due to his heirs' reluctanceto trade in "indelicate" items.

  At his death, his armory was left in the charge of his talented nephews, Eli Whitney Blake and PhilosBlake, notable inventors and manufacturers in their own right (they invented the mortise lock andthe stone-crushing machine).

  Eli Whitney Blake (1820-1894) assumed control of the armory in 1841. Working under contract toinventor Samuel Colt, the younger Whitney manufactured the famous "Whitneyville Walker Colts"for the Texas Rangers. The success of this contract rescued Colt from financial ruin and enabledhim to establish his own famous arms company. Whitney's marriage to Sarah Dalliba, daughter ofthe U.S. Army's chief of ordinance, helped to assure the continuing success of his business.

  The younger Whitney organized the New Haven Water Company, which began operations in1862. While this enterprise addressed the city's need for water, it also enabled Whitney to increasethe amount of power available for his manufacturing operations at the expense of the watercompany's stockholders. A new dam made it possible to consolidate his operations—originallylocated in three sites along the Mill River—in a single plant. This dam still exists.

  Whitney's grandson, Eli Whitney IV (1847-1924), sold the Whitney Armory to WinchesterRepeating Arms, another notable New Haven gun company, in 1888. He served as president ofthe water company until his death and was a major New Haven business and civic leader. Heplayed an important role in the development of New Haven's Ronan-Edgehill Neighborhood.

  Following the closure of the armory, the factory site continued to be used for a variety of industrialpurposes, including the water company. Many of the original armory buildings remained intact untilthe 1960s. In the 1970s, as part of the Bicentennial celebration, interested citizens organized the EliWhitney Museum, which opened to the public in 1984. The site today includes the boarding houseand barn that served Eli Whitney's original workers and a stone storage building from the originalarmory. Museum exhibits and programs are housed in a factory building constructed c. 1910. Awater company office building constructed in the 1880s now houses educational programsoperated by the South Central Connecticut Regional Water Authority (which succeeded the NewHaven Water Company).

  Eli Whitney and his descendants are buried in New Haven's historic Grove Street Cemetery.YaleCollege's Eli Whitney Students Program, which is one of the four doors into Yale College, is namedafter Whitney in recognition of his venerable age at the time of his entrance to Yale College in1789; he was 23 years old. Eli Whitney is the great-great-grandfather of Eli Whitney Debevoise II,the current U.S. Executive Director of the World Bank Group.

  Whitney was inducted into the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame in 1975.

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