177. Eli Whitney begins making nails; he goes to college.--When Eli
was fifteen, he began making nails. We have machines to-day which
will make more than a hundred nails a minute; but Eli made his, one
by one, by pounding them out of a long, slender bar of red-hot iron.
Whitney's hand-made nails were not handsome, but they were strong
and tough, and as the Revolutionary War was then going on, he could
sell all he could make.
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