A series of specific challenges led Eli Whitney to exercise his ingenuity in technology and made him an engineer. His cotton gin revolutionized Southern agricul

This is a collection of essays focusing on the spread and elaboration of American technology, and on the men and women who shaped it. Beginning with technology

Lakwete shows how indentured British, and later enslaved Africans, built and used foot-powered models to process the cotton they grew for export. After Eli Whit