A man or a woman of little actual mechanical skill
may make an excellent machine tender, learning to perform a few
simple motions with great rapidity.
* Denison Olmstead, "Memoir", cited by Roe, p. 159.
Whitney married in 1817 Miss Henrietta Edwards, daughter of Judge
Pierpont Edwards, of New Haven, and granddaughter of Jonathan
Edwards. His business prospered, and his high character,
agreeable manners, and sound judgment won. for him the highest
regard of all who knew him; and he had a wide circle of friends.
It is said that he was on intimate terms with every President of
the United States from George Washington to John Quincy Adams.
But his health had been impaired by hardships endured in the
South, in the long struggle over the cotton gin, and he died in
1825, at the age of fifty-nine. The business which he founded
remained in his family for ninety years. It was carried on after
his death by two of his nephews and then by his son, until 1888,
when it was sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New
Haven.
Here then, in these early New England gunshops, was born the
American system of interchangeable manufacture. Its growth
depended upon the machine tool, that is, the machine for making
machines. Machine tools, of course, did not originate in America.
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