Eli Whitney, Class of 1792 (1765-1825). Whitney is best known for inventing the cotton gin in 1793. Previously, removing the seeds from cotton was a slow job that had to be done by hand. (Legend has it that Whitney’s idea for a seed-removing machine had come to him as he watched a cat try to pull a chicken through a fence. The cat only got a few feathers.)

Whitney’s most important technological innovation, however, took place at the firearms factory he built in 1798 near the northern boundary of New Haven, where he instituted mass manufacture of interchangeable parts. Though he did not invent the concepts of division of labor and standardized production, his factory was one of the first enterprises to apply them successfully.

Whitney has been credited both with causing the Civil War—by making the production of cotton, and thereby slavery, profitable for the South—and with ensuring the North’s victory through superiority in the mass production of guns and goods. He appeared on a one-cent stamp in 1940.