Did Eli Whitney Begin The Trend Toward Sprawl?

"Whitney's interchangeable system for muskets is the same that Henry Ford applied to the automobile assembly line, that William Levitt applied to suburban housing, that Ray Kroc applied to fast food restaurants, that Al Neuharth applied to newspapers (think of the Gannettoids who brought us USA Today), and so on down a landscape of sameness... But Whitney wasn't quite an interchangeable part that played its part particularly well. He hadn't "thought outside the box" to succeed. He'd destroyed the box and built his own from scratch. That's what's being lost now to boxes and bigness: The impulse to creatively destroy, and the admiration for the destroyers."

Thanks to Michael Dudley