7 Eli Whitney 7similar to an engraving on copper plate from which may be
taken a great number of impressions perceptibly alike.”
But more than 10 years passed before Whitney delivered
his 10,000 muskets. He constantly had to plead for time
while struggling against unforeseen obstacles, such as
epidemics and delays in supplies, to create a new system of
production. Finally, he overcame most of the skepticism
in 1801, when, in Washington, D.C., before President-elect
Thomas Jefferson and other officials, he demonstrated
the result of his system: from piles of disassembled muskets
they picked parts at random and assembled complete
muskets. They were the witnesses at the inauguration of
the American system of mass production.
In 1817 Whitney married Henrietta Edwards, grand-
daughter of the Puritan theologian Jonathan Edwards. Of
his four children, three survived, including Eli Whitney,
Jr., who continued his father’s arms manufactory in
Hamden, Connecticut.
Alois Senefelder
(b. Nov. 6, 1771, Prague [now in the Czech Republic]—d. Feb. 26,
1834, Munich, Ger.)
J
ohann Nepomuk Franz Alois Senefelder was a German
inventor of lithography.
The son of an actor at the Theatre Royal in Prague,
Senefelder was unable to continue his studies at the
University of Ingolstadt after his father’s death and thus
tried to support himself as a performer and author, but
without success. He learned printing in a printing office,
purchased a small press, and sought to do his own printing.
Desiring to publish plays that he had written but
unable to afford the expensive engraving of printing
plates, Senefelder tried to engrave them himself. His work