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Eli Whitney was an American inventor. He was born in 1765 at Connecticut and died in 1825. He was the inventor of the cotton-gin, which so facilitated the preparation of cotton that it increased its exportation from 189,500 pounds in 1791 to 41,000,000 pounds in 1803. In 1798 he established an arms-factory near New Haven, Connecticut, which was the first one in America. He supplied the Government with arms of a superior quality.
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James Whitney was a famous highwayman. He was born in 1660 and died in 1694.
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Josiah Whitney was an American geologist. He was born in 1819 and died in 1896. He made valuable geological surveys of Ohio, the Lake Superior region, Mississippi and California. He became professor of geology at Harvard in 1865.
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Peter Whitney (real name Peter Eagle) was an American actor. He was born in 1916 and died in 1972.
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Grace Lee Whitney is an American actress and singer. She was born in 1930 at Ann Arbor, Michigan. She is best known for her role as 'Yeoman Rand' in the 1960's television series 'Star Trek'.
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Whitney Houston is an American singer, actress and film producer. She was born in 1963 at East Orange, New Jersey.
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A cotton gin is a machine for separating the fibres of raw or seed cotton from the seeds. The invention of the cotton gin in 1793 by the American inventor Eli Whitney was one of the most important factors in the creation of the immense cotton industry in the USA; before that time the removal of seeds was a tedious and uneconomical manual process. A side effect of the invention of the cotton gin was a rise in the price of slaves in the USA and the end of hopes of emancipation for them at that time.
Whitney's gin, also called a saw gin, consisted of a cylinder to which a number of saw-like teeth were affixed. As the cylinder revolved, the teeth passed through the closely spaced ribs of a fixed comb. When cotton was fed into the gin, the teeth caught the cotton fibres and pulled them through the comb, leaving the seeds, which were too large to pass between the ribs, behind. This principle, with virtually no modifications, is still employed in modern automatic saw gins used to process the bulk of the American cotton crop. One disadvantage of the saw gin is that it tends to damage the fibre, particularly in the case of long-staple cottons. For ginning such cottons, which include the Egyptian, pima, and Sea Island varieties, the roller gin is used. In this gin the cotton is carried on the surface of a leather-covered roller that has a blade fixed parallel to the axis of the roller and nearly touching its surface. The cotton fibre passes under the blade on the roller, but the seeds cannot pass the blade and are forced out of the fibre. The roller gin is slow, so it is used only for premium grades of cotton.
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Whitneyite, after the American geologist J.D. Whitney, is an arsenide of copper from Lake Superior.
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The McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk (Bantam Bomber) is an American single-seater carrier-borne and land-based light attack aircraft developed during the 1950s to the US navy's requirements for a turbojet successor to the Douglas AD-6 Skyraider. The McDonnell Douglas A-4 Skyhawk II is a low-wing cantilever monoplane powered by a Pratt and Whitney J52-P-408 turbojet providing a top speed of 1103 kmh and a range of 547 km fully laden. It is armed with two 20 mm Mk 12 cannon in the wing roots and up to 9,155 lb (4153 kg) of disposable stores can be carried on five hard points, one under the fuselage and two under each wing.
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The Aerospatiale SN 601 (Corvette) is a French civilian business jet and military utility light transport aircraft developed in the late 1960's for the civilian market, entering limited military service in 1974. The Aerospatiale SN 601 is powered by two Pratt and Whitney Canada JT15D-4 turbofans providing a top speed of 800 kmh and a range of 1645 km fully laden. The Aerospatiale SN 601 carries a flight crew of two and up to 14 passengers or freight in the cabin.
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The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
©1993 - 2009 The Probert Encyclopaedia
Southampton, United Kingdom
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