Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/520

488 its boats could pass elevations. He took out patents on 22 May, 1847, for the corrugated plate car-wheel, and the curved corrugated plate wheel, and began their manufacture with his son George as partner. On 25 April, 1848, he patented his process for annealing car-wheels. It consisted in placing the wheels, soon after they were cast, in a heated furnace, where they were subjected to a further gradual increase of temperature, and were then slowly cooled for three days. The discovery of this process of annealing, as applied to chilled cast-iron wheels, marked an era in the history of railroads. It enabled them with safety to increase both loads and speed. Previous to this discovery it was impossible to cast wheels with solid hubs, and therefore impossible to secure them rigidly to the axle. Now the whole wheel was easily cast in one piece, and capable of being forced securely upon the axle at a pressure of forty tons. Over ten million car-wheels are now in use in this country, and this principle of annealing is applied in some form to every wheel that is made of chilled cast-iron. On 19 March, 1850, he patented the tapered and ribbed corrugated wheel. For many years he made from 50,000 to 75,000 car-wheels per annum. The business is still carried on by the firm of A. Whitney and Sons. In 1860 Mr. Whitney was made president of the Reading railroad, but he resigned in a year from failing health, after contributing largely to the success of the road. He gave liberally during his life, and among other public bequests he gave $50,000 to found a professorship of dynamical engineering in the University of Pennsylvania, $12,500 to the Franklin institute, and $20,000 to the Old men's home in Philadelphia.

WHITNEY, Asa, merchant, b. in 1797; d. in Washington, D. C., in August, 1872. He was in mercantile business in New York city. He recognized the necessity of a railroad to the Pacific, was the first to suggest its feasibility, and from 1846 till 1850 urged it upon congress, the legislatures of several states, and the public, by personal influence and his writings. He was finally instrumental in securing appropriations in 1853 for the first surveys of the northern, southern, and middle routes, and lived to see communication opened from sea to sea in 1869. He was the author of &ldquo;A Project for a Railroad to the Pacific&rdquo; (New York, 1849), and &ldquo;A Plan for a Direct Communication between the Great Centres of Populations of Europe and Asia&rdquo; (London, 1851).

WHITNEY, Eli, inventor, b. in Westborough, Mass., 8 Dec., 1765; d. in New Haven, Conn., 8 Jan., 1825. During the Revolutionary war he was engaged in making nails by hand. Subsequently, by his industry as an artisan and by teaching, he was able to defray his expenses at Yale, where he was graduated in 1792. In the same year he went to Georgia under an engagement as a private tutor, but, on arriving there, found that the place had been filled. He then accepted the invitation of the widow of Gen. Nathanael Greene to make her place at Mulberry Grove, on Savannah river, his home while he studied law. Several articles that he had devised for Mrs. Greene's convenience gave her great faith in his inventive powers, and when some of her visitors regretted that there could be no profit in the cultivation of the green seed-cotton, which was considered the best variety, owing to the great difficulty of separating it from the seed, she advised them to apply to Whitney &ldquo;who,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;could make anything.&rdquo; A pound of green seed-cotton was all that a negro woman could at that period clean in a day. Mr. Whitney up to that

time had seen neither the raw cotton nor the cotton seed, but he at once procured some cotton from which the seeds had not been removed, although with trouble, as it was not the season of the year for the cultivation of the plant, and began to work out his idea of the cotton-gin. He was occupied for some months in constructing his machine, during which he met with great difficulty, being compelled to draw the necessary iron-wire himself, as he could obtain none in Savannah, and to manufacture his own iron tools. Near the end of 1792 he succeeded in making a gin of which the principle and mechanism are both exceedingly simple. Its main features are a cylinder four feet long and five inches in diameter, upon which is set a series of circular saws half an inch apart and projecting two inches above the surface of the revolving cylinder. A mass of cotton in the seed, separated from the cylinder by a steel grating, is brought into contact with the numerous teeth on the cylinder. These teeth catch the cotton while playing between the bars r which allow the lint, but not the seed, to pass. Beneath the saws is a set of stiff brushes on another cylinder revolving in the opposite direction, which brush off from the saw-teeth the lint that these have just pulled from the seed. There is also a revolving fan for producing a current of air to throw the light and downy lint that is thus liberated to a convenient distance from the revolving saws and brushes. Such are the essential principles of the cotton-gin as invented by Whitney and as it is still used; but in various details and workmanship it has been the subject of many improvements, the object of which has been to pick the cotton more perfectly from the seed, to prevent the teeth from cutting the staple, and to give greater regularity to the operation of the- machine. By its use the planter was able to clean for market, by the labor of one man, one thousand pounds of cotton in place of five or six by hand, Mrs. Greene and Phineas Miller were the only persons that were permitted to see the machine, but rumors of it had gone through the state, and before it was quite finished the building in which it was placed was broken into at night and the machine was carried off. Before he could complete his model and obtain a patent, a number of machines based on his invention had been made surreptitiously and were in operation. In May, 1793, he formed a partnership with Mr. Miller, who had some property, and went to Connecticut to manufacture the machines; but he became involved in continual trouble by the infringement of his patent. In Georgia it was boldly asserted that he was not the inventor, but that something like it had been produced in Switzerland, and it was claimed that the substitution of teeth cut in an iron plate for wire prevented an infringement on his invention. He had sixty lawsuits pending before he secured a verdict in his favor. In South Carolina the legislature granted him $50,000, which was finally paid