Eli Whitney, Father of American Mass Production

“Eli Whitney, Father of American Mass Production”
Westborough’s most famous inventor, Eli Whitney (1765-1825), perfected the cotton gin to remove seeds from short-stem cotton and inadvertently increased the demand for slave labor on Southern plantations. He went on to apply mass production to the manufacture of guns at the Whitney Arms Company in Hartford, CT. Cary Mulrain, former WHS president, described the life of Eli Whitney in a zoom presentation on 2/22/21. The Town is currently exploring whether the cotton gin should be removed from the Town's logo.