As early
as 1798 he had turned his talents to the manufacture of firearms.
He had established his shops at Whitneyville, near New Haven; and
it was there that he worked out another achievement quite as
important economically as the cotton gin, even though the
immediate consequences were less spectacular: namely, the
principle of standardization or interchangeability in
manufacture.
This principle is the very foundation today of all American
large-scale production. The manufacturer produces separately
thousands of copies of every part of a complicated machine,
confident that an equal number of the complete machine will be
assembled and set in motion. The owner of a motor car, a reaper,
a tractor, or a sewing machine, orders, perhaps by telegraph or
telephone, a broken or lost part, taking it for granted that the
new part can be fitted easily and precisely into the place of the
old.
Though it is probable that this idea of standardization, or
interchangeability, originated independently in Whitney's mind,
and though it is certain that he and one of his neighbors, who
will be mentioned presently, were the first manufacturers in the
world to carry it out successfully in practice, yet it must be
noted that the idea was not entirely new. We are told that the
system was already in operation in England in the manufacture of
ship's blocks.
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