Mechanical Hands
In his sweeping history of America, Daniel Boorstein places Eli Whitney at the threshold of a revolution. For the skills of the artist…acquired only by long practice and experience and not available in this country, Whitney set out to substitute the correct and effective operations of machinery (Whitney’s words.) In Boorstein’s view, this was a Know-how revolution – a new way, not only of making things, but of making the machines that make things. Mechanical fingers replaced the craftsman’s fingers. Machines, not men, became specialized.