Ely Whitney
By the late 1790s, Whitney was on the verge of bankruptcy and cotton gin litigation had left him
deeply in debt. His New Haven cotton gin factory had burned to the ground, and litigation
sapped his remaining resources. The French Revolution had ignited new conflicts between Great
Britain, France, and the United States. The new American government, realizing the need to
prepare for war, began to rearm. The War Department issued contracts for the manufacture of
10,000 muskets. Whitney, who had never made a gun in his life, obtained a contract in January,
1798 to deliver ten to fifteen thousand muskets in 1800. Ten months later, Treasury Secretary
Wolcott sent him a "foreign pamphlet on arms manufacturing techniques," possibly one of
Honoré Blanc's reports, after which Whitney first began to talk about interchangeability. After
spending most of 1799-1801 in cotton gin litigation, Whitney began promoting the idea of
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