Eli Whitney Blake

Eli Whitney Blake, Sr. (January 27, 1795 – August 18, 1886) was an American inventor, best known for his mortise lock and stone-crushing machine, the latter of which earned him a place into the National Inventors Hall of Fame.

Early life Blake was born on January 27, 1795, in Westborough in Worcester County, Massachusetts. He was the son of Elihu Blake and Elizabeth Fay (née Whitney) Blake. His older brother, also named Elihu Blake, was the father of William Phipps Blake.

He was a nephew of Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton gin. His maternal grandparents were Eli Whitney Sr., a prosperous farmer, and his wife Elizabeth (née Fay) Whitney. His paternal grandparents were Tamar (née Thompson) Blake and Ebenezer Blake Jr., a descendant of William Blake, who emigrated from England to Dorchester between 1630 and 1635, and later helped William Pynchon settle Springfield, Massachusetts.

Blake studied at Leicester Academy, and was graduated at Yale in 1816, after which he studied law with Judge Gould at Litchfield Law School in Litchfield, Connecticut.

Career Blake soon abandoned the study of law at the request of his uncle, Eli Whitney, who desired his assistance in erecting and organizing the gun factory at Whitneyville. Here he made important improvements in the machinery and in the processes of manufacturing arms. In 1836, under the firm name of Blake Brothers, they established at Westville a factory for the production of door locks and latches of their own invention. The business was afterward extended so as to include casters, hinges, and other articles of hardware, most of which were covered by patents. In this branch of manufacture, Blake Brothers were among the pioneers, and long held the front rank.

In 1852, Blake was appointed to superintend the macadamizing of the city streets, and his attention was directed to the want of a proper machine for breaking stone. This problem he solved in 1857, by the invention of the Blake stone breaker, which, for originality, simplicity, and effectiveness, was justly regarded by experts as unique.

Blake was one of the founders, and for several years president, of the Connecticut Academy of Science. He contributed valuable papers to the American Journal of Science and other periodicals, the most important of which he published in a single volume as Original Solutions of Several Problems in Aërodynamics (1882).

Personal life On July 8, 1822, Blake was married to Eliza Maria O'Brien (1799–1876), including five boys who graduated from Yale:

Mary Elizabeth Blake (1823–1916), who married Rev. George Bushnell (1818–1898). Henrietta Whitney Blake (1825–1901), who married Alexander MacWhorter III. Charles Thompson Blake (1826–1897), who went to California during the gold rush and worked in gold assaying for Wells, Fargo & Co. He married Harriet Waters Stiles. Robert Pierrepont Blake (1830–1836), who died in childhood. Arthur's sister Elizabeth married Gov. Henry Baldwin Harrison. Eli Whitney Blake, Jr. (1836–1895), who married Helen Mary Rood (1832–1869). James Pierrepont Blake (1839–1865), who drowned near Beaufort, South Carolina while trying to assist freedmen. Eliza Maria Blake (1841–1917).

Through his daughter Frances, he was the grandfather of chemist Thomas Burr Osborn and Arthur Sherwood Osborn.