What if Eli Whitney didn't invent interchangeable parts?

Every single invention/discovery you know of, was NOT some truly revolutionary "thing" that—without that individual—would never have occurred, but a layer in a series of cascading, auto-catalytic EVENTUALITIES that were made possible and likely by the previous inventor/discoverer. read more

Interchangeable parts, popularized in America when Eli Whitney used them to assemble muskets in the first years of the 19th century, allowed relatively unskilled workers to produce large numbers of weapons quickly and at lower cost, and made repair and replacement of parts infinitely easier. read more

Eli Whitney was an American inventor who created the cotton gin and pushed the “interchangeable parts” mode of production. Synopsis Born on December 8, 1765, in Westboro, Massachusetts, Eli Whitney studied at Yale before going on to invent the cotton gin, a device that highly streamlined the process of extracting fiber from cotton seeds. read more