well known and influential through his invention of the cotton gin and
was located in a larger center. He was called upon by the Government
for advice, and at its request sent to Springfield some of his best
workmen to introduce his system there, and also help to start it at
Harper’s Ferry. Whitney built his factory in 1798 or 1800, and employed
at the start about sixty men. Colonel North moved from Berlin to
Middletown in 1813, and built a factory at a cost of about $100,000,
where he employed seventy men and produced about thirty pistols a day.
The interchangeable system was well begun in both of these factories by
1815.

The Springfield armory had been started during the Revolution,
mainly for making cannon. In 1792 Congress authorized the President
to establish two arsenals for small arms. These were located at
Springfield in the North, and Harper’s Ferry in the South. In 1811
Captain Hall was granted a patent for a gun which was adopted as
the government standard in 1819 and the Government undertook to
manufacture them at one of its own armories. Captain Hall was placed
in charge of the work and the plant at Harper’s Ferry was equipped
for interchangeable manufacture.[161] Later many of these rifles were
made by private contractors, such as Colonel North. By 1828 in one of
Colonel North’s contracts we find the principle of interchangeability
extended still further. It is guaranteed that the component parts
should be interchangeable, not only in the lot contracted for, but
that they may be exchanged in a similar manner with the rifles made or
making at the national armories.[162]

  [161] “Memoir of Simeon North,” pp. 168-169.

  [162] _Ibid._, p. 160.

In 1836 Samuel Colt invented his revolver, and the first lot contracted
for by the Government was made at the Whitney works in 1847. Mr.
Colt determined about 1850 to establish his own factory, moved to
Hartford, and in 1854-1855 built the present Colt’s Armory, in which
the principles of interchangeable manufacture were adopted in a most
advanced form. Hand work was practically eliminated and automatic
and semi-automatic machinery substituted. A type of manufacturing
miller, built for this work by George S. Lincoln & Company, is still
known as the Lincoln miller. E. K. Root, superintendent under Colt,
had a profound influence in the development of manufacturing at this
time. He put the art of die forging on its present basis. At first
he used a type of hammer in which four impressions were arranged in
four different sets of dies. The hammers were lifted, first by a set
of dogs, later by a central screw, and the operator walked around the
machine, using the impressions successively. A few years later the
present form of board drop was developed. Two of George S. Lincoln &
Company’s men were Francis A. Pratt, superintendent, and Amos Whitney,
contractor, who later founded the firm of Pratt & Whitney.

In 1857 Smith & Wesson began manufacturing revolvers at Springfield
along similar lines. Mr. Smith had worked in the old Whitney shops.
Another firm of great influence was that of Robbins & Lawrence,
later the Windsor Machine Company, in Windsor, Vt. Frederick W.
Howe built there a number of machines for profile milling, rifling,
barrel drilling, and is said to have designed the first “universal”
miller in 1852.[163] The Ames Manufacturing Company in Chicopee,
which had been founded in 1829, was also engaged in this work. By
1850 the interchangeable system began to extend its influence abroad.
Robbins & Lawrence had an exhibit of interchangeable guns in the
exposition at London in 1851, which attracted much attention. In 1853
a British Commission came to this country and visited the government
and private armories, the Ames Manufacturing Company and Robbins &
Lawrence. During the visit of this Commission at Springfield, Major
Ripley, superintendent of the armory, ordered ten guns, which had
been manufactured in ten successive years, from 1843 to 1853, to be
stripped, and the parts to be reassembled at random.

  [163] Not to be confused with the Brown & Sharpe universal milling
  machine, which was invented by Joseph R. Brown in 1871.

   THOS. BLANCHARD            ELI WHITNEY          SIMEON NORTH
  Blanchard lathe and      New Haven, Conn.      Middletown, Conn.
  stocking machinery       After his death       Four sons--Reuben,
       *1, 2*              business carried on   James, Alvin and
                           by E. W. & Philos     Selah
                           Blake, nephews,            *8, 9*
                           followed by Eli
                           Whitney, Jr.
                           Business sold to
                           Winchester
                           Repeating Arms
                           Co. 1888
                            *3, 4, 5, 6, 7*

           #1, 3, 8#                       #2 7 9#
      SPRINGFIELD ARMORY            HARPER’S FERRY ARMORY
                                     Capt. John H. Hall
                                     Jas. H. Burton
                                           *15*

                                                  #6#
  ROBBINS & LAWRENCE                        SMITH & WESSON
    Windsor, Vt.                           Norwich, Conn. later
    Fredk. W. Howe                         Springfield, Mass.
    Henry D. Stone                         Horace Smith worked
   *10 11 12 13 14*                      for Whitney Arms Co.
                                         D. B. Wesson invented
                                         cartridge, which was
                                         sold to
                                                 *16*

                                  #4#                    #16#
       AMES MFG. CO.          SAMUEL COLT          VOLCANIC ARMS CO.
      Chicopee, Mass.       Hartford, Conn.          Sold to O. F.
      N. P. Ames,           First revolvers          Winchester
      Jas. T. Ames,         made by Whitney            *23 24*
          *17*              Arms Co.
          #15#               *19 20 21 22*
      Jas. H. Burton
          *18*

        #12 17#                  #20#                  #14 23#
  ENFIELD GUN MACHINERY       E. K. ROOT             TYLER HENRY
   and other machinery    Built Colt’s Armory:    Workman at Robbins &
   for European           Drop hammers, cartridge Lawrence. Improved the
   governments            machinery               Jennings’ Rifle
                                 *25*                    *26*

       #18 19#                 #13 21 25#              #24 26#
    C. M. SPENCER         GEO. S. LINCOLN & CO.   NEW HAVEN ARMS CO.
  Rifles, drop            Hartford, Conn.           “Henry” Rifle
  hammers, automatic      Lincoln Miller, first         *28*
  lathes                  built for Colt. Pratt
       *29*               and Whitney were two
                          of their foremen
                                  *27*

         #11#                   #22 27#                  #5 28#
  JONES & LAMSON MACH.      PRATT & WHITNEY        WINCHESTER REPEATING
          CO.             Hartford. Conn.              ARMS CO.
  Turret lathes, etc.     Gun machinery,         New Haven, Conn.
                          machine tools, etc.    “Model ’66” Winchester,
                                                 etc.

           #10 22 29#                              #30#
       BILLINGS & SPENCER                 HARTFORD MACH. SCR. CO.
  Drop Hammers, Drop Forgings, etc.   Automatic Lathes, Screw Machine
  Billings apprentice at Robbins &    Products
  Lawrence.                           Fairfield and Spencer. Both worked
  Billings and Spencer worked at      at Colt’s
  Colt’s.
            *30*

FIGURE 27. GENEALOGY OF THE NEW ENGLAND GUN MAKERS]

As a result of this visit 20,000 interchangeable Enfield rifles were
ordered by the English Government, and in 1855, 157 machines for the
manufacture of guns were sent to England. These machines comprised
seventy-four millers, twenty-three drilling machines, five tapping
machines, and seven edging machines. The remainder were special
machines for threading, rifling, turning, boring, and so on.[164] In
this list of machines scarcely a single lathe is found and no mention
is made of any turret machines. Ten or fifteen years later there
would have been a large number. James H. Burton, who had been at the
Harper’s Ferry armory and was at the time with the Ames Manufacturing
Company, went over to England to install the new system and operate
the new plant. The Ames Manufacturing Company alone is said to have
exported four to five hundred stocking machines of the Blanchard type
on these early foreign orders. Within the next fifteen or twenty years
nearly every government in Europe was supplied with American gun-making
machinery, all planned to operate on the interchangeable system, which
was known everywhere as “the American system.”

  [164] Fitch: “Report on Manufactures of Interchangeable Mechanism,”
  U. S. Census, 1880. Volume on “Manufactures.”

Nasmyth was concerned in the introduction of this machinery into
England. His mention of it in his autobiography throws light on how the
interchangeable system was looked upon by the English engineers:

  In 1853 I was appointed a member of the Small Arms Committee for the
  purpose of remodeling and, in fact, re-establishing, the Small Arms
  Factory at Enfield. The wonderful success of the needle gun in the
  war between Prussia and Denmark in 1848 occasioned some alarm amongst
  our military authorities as to the state of affairs at home. The
  Duke of Wellington to the last proclaimed the sufficiency of “Brown
  Bess” as a weapon of offense and defense; but matters could no longer
  be deferred. The United States Government, though possessing only a
  very small standing army, had established at Springfield a small arms
  factory, where, by the use of machine tools specially designed to
  execute with the most unerring precision all the details of muskets
  and rifles, they were enabled to dispense with mere manual dexterity,
  and to produce arms to any amount. It was finally determined to
  improve the musketry and rifle systems of the English army. The
  Government resolved to _introduce the American system_,[165] by
  which arms might be produced much more perfectly, and at a great
  diminution of cost. It was under such circumstances that the Small
  Arms Committee was appointed.

  [165] Italics are ours.

  Colonel Colt had brought to England some striking examples of
  the admirable tools used at Springfield[166] and he established
  a manufactory at Pimlico for the production of his well-known
  revolvers. The committee resolved to make a personal visit to the
  United States Factory at Springfield. My own business engagements at
  home prevented my accompanying the members who were selected; but
  as my friend John Anderson (now Sir John) acted as their guide, the
  committee had in him the most able and effective helper. He directed
  their attention to the most important and available details of that
  admirable establishment. The United States Government acted most
  liberally in allowing the committee to obtain every information on
  the subject; and the heads of the various departments, who were
  intelligent and zealous, rendered them every attention and civility.

  [166] Hartford?

  The members of the mission returned home enthusiastically delighted
  with the results of their inquiry. The committee immediately
  proceeded with the entire remodeling of the Small Arms Factory
  at Enfield. The workshops were equipped with a complete series
  of special machine tools, chiefly obtained from the Springfield
  factory.[167] The United States Government also permitted several of
  their best and most experienced workmen and superintendents to take
  service under the English Government.[168]

  [167] This must be a mistake. The machinery seems to have been
  supplied chiefly by Bobbins & Lawrence and the Ames Mfg. Co. Mr.
  Burton of the latter company installed it.

  [168] Autobiography of James Nasmyth, pp. 362-363.

In using the term “interchangeable” it must be remembered that
the meaning attached to this word grew during these years. The
interchangeability of 1813 would not have been considered satisfactory
in 1855, much less so today. When Hall completed his first hundred
rifles at Harper’s Ferry in 1824, it is said that “the joint of the
breech block was so fitted that a sheet of paper would slide loosely
in the joint, but two sheets would stick.” This system of gauging will
have a familiar sound to the older mechanics who grew up before the
days of the micrometer. When Colonel North was given his first contract
for the rifles and furnished two models to work from, these models were
so unlike that he asked to have one set aside and that he be allowed to
gauge his work from the other.

Of the various tools associated with interchangeable manufacture,
drilling jigs were in use very early, probably from the start. The
filing jig is said to have been invented by Selah North, the son of
Colonel North, but it was used by Whitney almost as early. Both Whitney
and Colonel North were using plain milling by 1820. A light sort of
milling machine is shown in the French Encyclopedia of 1772, already
referred to, but the first successful one was built by Mr. Whitney some
time prior to 1818. This machine, still in existence and now in the
possession of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, is
shown again in Fig. 28.[169] In 1817 to 1822 we find the introduction
of forging in hand dies, barrel turning by special machinery, and the
Blanchard lathe for gun-stocks. Receiving gauges are said to have been
used at Middletown in 1829, and were regularly in use at Springfield
by 1840. Automatic machinery for the woodworking was first invented
by Blanchard in 1818 for the Springfield armory. The accuracy of
these machines, shown in Fig. 29, outran that of the metal work of
the time. To accommodate the variations still present in the metal
parts Blanchard devised a machine which used the actual lock plates as
formers and cut the stocks to match, and such machines were used at
Springfield until 1840. By that time the work on the metal parts could
be made as accurately as the stocks, and this method was no longer
necessary. A modern degree of accuracy in shaping of the metal portions
was not possible until the miller came into general use for irregular
shapes, which was some time in the forties. By 1842, for the new musket
to be manufactured at Springfield, there was a complete set of model
jigs, taps and gauges. The profiling machine was developed by F. W.
Howe, R. S. Lawrence, and E. K. Root, from 1848 to 1852. A drop hammer
with dies was used by Hall of Harper’s Ferry in 1827, the head of which
was raised by a moving chain and freed by a trip at the desired height.
Later Peck invented his lifter, using a strap. The Root drop hammers we
have already mentioned. The board drop is largely the work of Spencer.

  [169] For a detailed account of this machine and its history see
  _American Machinist_, Vol. XXXVI, p. 1037.

[Illustration: FIGURE 28. THE FIRST MILLING MACHINE

BUILT BY ELI WHITNEY ABOUT 1818. NOW IN THE MASON LABORATORY, YALE
UNIVERSITY]

[Illustration: FIGURE 29. BLANCHARD “GUN-STOCKING” LATHE

BUILT IN 1818 FOR THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY. IN USE OVER FIFTY YEARS]

Probably no machine has had so great an influence on interchangeable
manufacture as the automatic turret lathe. The turret lathe, “the first
radical improvement on Maudslay’s slide-rest,” was built commercially
by Robbins & Lawrence in 1854, and is said to have grown out of a
revolving-head bolt cutter which Henry D. Stone saw at Hartford. The
turret idea was not originated by Stone. Root and Howe had used it a
number of years before, and it had been utilized by several others.
All of these turrets except Howe’s seem to have had a horizontal axis
instead of the vertical one which became general. Later improvements
by C. M. Spencer and a long line of brilliant mechanics have increased
the accuracy of the turret lathe and made it more nearly automatic than
any other type of general machine tool. Today it is, with the milling
machine, the main reliance for interchangeable work.

In sketching the development of interchangeable methods in American
shops, we have confined our attention to gun makers chiefly. They were
by no means the only ones to have a part in this development, but
they were its originators, they determined its methods, and developed
most of the machines typical of the process. About 1830 Chauncey
Jerome began the manufacture of brass clocks. Terry, Thomas and other
Connecticut mechanics had been manufacturing wooden clocks, which gave
way to metal clocks as the advantage of interchangeable manufacture
became recognized. In 1848 A. L. Dennison founded the American Watch
Company at Waltham. The interchangeable system has nowhere reached a
higher development than in the work of this company and of the other
great watch factories. In 1846 Elias Howe was granted his patent on
sewing machines, and within four or five years their manufacture
sprang up on a large scale. Both of these industries, watch and clock
manufacture and the manufacture of sewing machines, utilized a system
which was already well established. Since that time it has been applied
to a wide variety of articles.

CHAPTER XII

WHITNEY AND NORTH

In the last chapter we considered the rise of the interchangeable
system of manufacture and saw that it started in the shops of Eli
Whitney, at New Haven, and of Simeon North, at Middletown. The lives
of these men are of much interest, particularly that of Whitney.
His struggle in defense of his patent rights on the cotton gin is
instructive for all who see a high road to fortune in the patenting of
a valuable invention.

Measured by its economic effect, the cotton gin is one of the greatest
of inventions. As an industrial factor its success was immediate and
far-reaching. It developed the agricultural resources of nearly half
the United States, made possible its gigantic cotton crop, vastly
increased the wealth of this country and, to a scarcely less extent,
that of England; and yet toward the end of his life, Mr. Whitney said
that he had hardly more than “come out even on it”; and this in spite
of the fact that his patent was sustained and was apparently one of the
most valuable ever granted.

A patent for an invention which meets a widespread and pressing need,
and for which there is a tremendous demand, is difficult to defend.
Watt’s rights in the steam engine were established only after a long
and bitter fight, and he would have failed and died a disappointed man
had it not been for the indomitable courage and business skill of his
partner, Matthew Boulton. Whitney was a far better business man than
Watt, but his partner was not in any way the equal of Boulton. If he
had been, the story of the cotton gin might have been different.

Whitney saw the futility of depending solely on patent rights and
wisely turned his splendid talents to manufacturing; where, without
patent protection of any kind, by methods then new, but which have
since spread throughout the world, he built up a fortune. Someone has
said that the besetting sin of mechanics is invention. This may, or may
not, be true, but it is worth pondering whether superior methods and
business judgment are not still the best industrial protection.

Eli Whitney, whose portrait is shown in Fig. 30, was born in
Westborough, Mass., in 1765. He came from that best school of
mechanics, the New England hill farm. Most of the early American
mechanics, like him, came from the country and had the same training
of hard work with simple implements, and learned to turn their
hand to nearly everything, and to work with few and rough tools.
From his boyhood he showed mechanical talent. When he was fifteen,
with his father’s consent, he began making nails with the aid of
such rudimentary tools as he could contrive. This was during the
Revolutionary War, when nails were in great demand and brought a high
price. By hard work he built up a profitable little business which he
carried on for two winters in addition to the ordinary work of the farm
during the summer. The business grew beyond his capacity to care for
alone, so he set out on horseback to a neighboring town in quest of a
fellow laborer. Not finding one as easily as he had anticipated, he
rode from town to town with the persistence which was a strong trait in
his character, until forty miles from home he found such a workman as
he desired. During this journey he called at every workshop on his way
and absorbed all the information he could respecting the mechanical
arts. When the nail business ceased to be profitable after the war, he
turned his attention to knife blades and to the making of the long pins
for bonnets then in fashion. He showed so much skill that he nearly
monopolized the latter business.

When nineteen years old, Whitney determined to obtain a liberal
education, but he was not able to gain his father’s consent until he
was twenty-three. Then, in 1788, with money made partly in his little
manufacturing business and partly from teaching school, he entered Yale
College. He completed his college education with but little expense to
his father who paid a few of the last of his college bills, for which
the son gave his note and which he paid soon after graduation. His work
at college was creditable, rather than brilliant; he left a marked
impression behind him for good judgment, sound reasoning and steady,
intelligent work.[170]

  [170] The best sources of information on Whitney are: Olmstead:
  “Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esqr.” New Haven, 1846. Blake: “History of
  Hamden, Conn.” New Haven, 1888. Blake: “Sketch of the Life of Eli
  Whitney,” “New Haven Colony Historical Society Papers,” Vol. V, 1894.

There were few school facilities in the South at that time and many of
the wealthy planters had their children educated by private tutors. In
the fall of 1792, the year in which he graduated, Whitney was engaged
as a private tutor in a family in Georgia. On his way there he met Mrs.
Greene, the widow of General Nathaniel Greene, who was returning to
Savannah after spending the summer in the North. When Whitney reached
Georgia he found that, despite his engagement, another had been given
his place and he was stranded, practically penniless, a thousand miles
from home and not knowing which way to turn. Mrs. Greene kindly invited
him to make her house his home. He did so, and began to study law
under her hospitable roof. Here he met Phineas Miller, a native of
Connecticut and also a graduate of Yale College, who had himself come
south as a tutor in the Greene family and after General Greene’s death
had become manager of his estate. He was a man of cultivated mind, of
eager, hopeful temperament and later he married Mrs. Greene.

Shortly after Whitney’s coming, a large party of gentlemen from Augusta
and the upper country, consisting principally of officers who had
served under the General in the Revolutionary army, were visiting
Mrs. Greene. In the course of the conversation the deplorable state
of agriculture was discussed, and great regret expressed that there
was no means of separating green seed cotton from its seed, since
all the lands which were unsuitable for the cultivation of rice and
long staple cotton, would yield large crops of green seed cotton. The
black or long staple cotton had already been introduced successfully
in the Sea Islands, but it could not be grown inland. It was vain to
think of raising green seed or upland cotton for the market unless
some machine could be devised which would facilitate the process of
cleaning. Separating one pound of the staple from the seed was a day’s
work for one woman. During this conversation Mrs. Greene told them that
Whitney could invent their machine, saying, “He can make anything.”
This incident turned Whitney’s attention to the subject. Encouraged
by Miller he dropped his law studies, went to Savannah, obtained a
small parcel of raw cotton, and set himself at work on the problem.
With such resources as the plantation afforded he made tools suited
to his purpose, drew his own wire and by the close of the winter had
so far developed the machine as to leave no doubt of its success. The
first model he made (made, it is said, in about two weeks) is still in
existence in the possession of his grandson, the present Eli Whitney.
The three essential elements of his gin, the rotary wheel with forward
pointing wires or teeth, the slotted bar, and the revolving brushes for
cleaning the teeth, remain practically unchanged today.

At that time the market was glutted with such products as Georgia
produced, trade was languishing, and there was little employment
for the negroes or support for the white inhabitants. Mrs. Greene
indiscreetly showed the first machine to visitors and the news soon
leaked out that a means had been devised for separating more cotton in
one day, with the labor of a single man, than could have been done in
the usual manner in the space of many months. An invention so important
to the agricultural interest could not long remain a secret. The
knowledge spread throughout the state and so great was the excitement
that multitudes from all quarters came to see the machine. It was
not deemed safe to gratify their curiosity until patent rights were
secured, but so determined were they that the building was broken into
by night and the machine carried off. In this way the public became
possessed of the invention, and before Whitney could secure his patent
a number of machines were in successful operation. They deviated only
slightly from the original and gave Whitney much trouble later in
establishing his rights to the invention.

In the spring of 1793, Miller and Whitney formed a partnership under
the name of Miller & Whitney, for developing the business, and Whitney
returned to Connecticut to perfect the machine, obtain a patent, and
manufacture and ship to Georgia machines to meet the demand. At the
start they made a fatal error of policy in deciding to buy the seed
themselves, gin it and sell the product. Protected by their patent,
they planned to maintain a monopoly of this business. Later they were
willing to manufacture and sell the machines for general use or to sell
the rights. If they had done this at the start much of the opposition
which they incurred might have been obviated. Whitney, at least, was a
clear-sighted business man and if he had realized the magnitude of the
result of his invention he would probably not have chosen this course.

There is not another instance in the history of invention of the
letting loose of such tremendous industrial forces so suddenly. The
inventions of Arkwright, Watt, Fulton and Stephenson have affected
society quite as profoundly as did that of the cotton gin, some of them
more so, but in none of these cases were the results so immediate.
In 1784, only eight years before Whitney’s invention, eight bales of
cotton from the United States which were landed at Liverpool were
seized on the ground that they _could not have been produced_ in the
United States.[171] In 1791 the total production of cotton in the
world was estimated at 490,000,000 pounds, of which the United States
produced 2,000,000 pounds, or only ¹⁄₂₄₅, of which 189,316 pounds were
exported. In 1792 they exported 138,328 pounds, an actual decrease
of 51,000 pounds from the previous year. In 1793, the year after the
gin was invented, there was an exportation of 487,000 pounds; in
1794 of 1,601,000 pounds; in 1795 of 6,276,000 pounds. By 1800 the
total production had risen to 35,000,000 pounds, of which 17,790,000
pounds were exported. In 1845 the total estimated output of the world
was 1,169,600,000 pounds, of which the United States produced nearly
seven-eighths.[172] At the present time the output of the United
States is about 15,000,000 bales, or 7,000,000,000 pounds. Less than 1
per cent of this is “Sea Island” or long staple cotton. All the rest is
upland or green seed cotton, cleaned on the Whitney type of gin, and
made commercially available by his method of cleaning.

  [171] Olmstead: “Memoir of Eli Whitney, Esqr.” p. 63. Also,
  Encyclopedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, Vol. VII, p. 264.

  [172] Olmstead: “Memoir.” Also _Merchant’s Magazine_, Vol. VI,
  Article on “History of the American Cotton Trade,” by James H. Lanman.

The intensity of the demand for the use of this machine made it
practically impossible to defend a patent right upon it. The patent
laws of the country, as has been stated, were crude at that time, and
the infringement suits were tried before juries composed of the very
men who were interested in breaking the patent.

Nearly all of the great inventions have been developments to which
a number of inventors have contributed, as in the case of the steam
engine, the locomotive, and the steamboat; but the fundamental
invention of the cotton gin was due to Whitney and to Whitney alone.
And yet in a letter written to Robert Fulton, at a later date, he says:

  My invention was new and distinct from every other: it stood alone.
  It was not interwoven with anything before known; and it can seldom
  happen that an invention or improvement is so strongly marked, and
  can be so clearly and specifically identified; and I have always
  believed, that I should have had no difficulty in causing my rights
  to be respected, if it had been less valuable, and been used only
  by a small portion of the community. But the use of this machine
  being immensely profitable to almost every planter in the cotton
  districts, all were interested in trespassing upon the patent-right,
  and each kept the other in countenance. Demagogs made themselves
  popular by misrepresentation and unfounded clamors, both against
  the right and against the law made for its protection. Hence there
  arose associations and combinations to oppose both. At one time,
  but few men in Georgia dared to come into court and testify to the
  most simple facts within their knowledge, relative to the use of the
  machine. In one instance, I had great difficulty in proving that the
  machine _had been used in Georgia_, although, at the same moment,
  there were three separate sets of this machinery in motion, within
  fifty yards of the building in which the court sat, and all _so near
  that the rattling of the wheels was distinctly heard on the steps of
  the court-house_.[173]

  [173] Olmstead, p. 58. (Italics are ours.)

It should in justice be said that at first there was no widespread
disposition on the part of the Georgia planters to avail themselves of
the invention unlawfully, but later nearly all, deluded by the general
attitude, joined in the attack upon the inventor’s rights.

The unfortunate policy adopted by Miller & Whitney worked to their
disadvantage in two ways. First, they could not themselves produce
machines fast enough to gin the rapidly increasing crops; and second,
their policy of buying the seed and ginning it themselves meant
financing the entire crop and called for a vastly greater capital than
they had at their command. Infringing machines sprang up on every side,
their most formidable rival being the saw gin of Hodgin Holmes, in
which circular saws were used instead of a drum with inserted wires
as in Whitney’s original gin. The idea of such teeth had occurred to
Whitney, as he afterward proved; but not until 1807 did he completely
establish his right over this machine.

[Illustration: FIGURE 30. ELI WHITNEY]

Perplexities and discouragements dogged their steps from the start.
In 1795 the shop which they had built in New Haven, together with all
machines and papers, was consumed by fire. In the diary of President
Stiles of Yale College is an entry: “March 12 (1795). Yesterday morning
Mr. Whitney’s workshop consumed by fire. Loss 3000 Dol. about 10
finished machines for seeding cotton & 5 or 6 unfinished, & all the
tools which no man can make but Mr. Whitney, the inventor, & which he
has been 2 years in making.” They found great difficulty in raising
money, even at rates from 12 to 25 per cent. With these misfortunes
upon them, word was received from England that the manufacturers
condemned the cotton cleaned by their machines on the ground that the
staple was injured. They had thirty gins at work in eight different
places in Georgia and many of these were brought to a standstill.
It was nearly two years before this prejudice could be overcome. By
that time, however, encroachments on their patent right had become so
extensive as almost to annihilate its value. The first infringement
suit was tried in 1797 and went against them. An appeal was denied on
technicalities.[174] At a second trial, in 1798, a great number of
witnesses had been collected from various parts of the country, some
of them from one hundred miles away, when the judge failed to appear,
and, of course, no court was held.[175] Mr. Miller writes in 1799
that “the prospect of making anything by ginning in this State, is
at an end. Surreptitious gins are being erected in every part of the
country; and the jurymen at Augusta have come to an understanding among
themselves, that they will never give a verdict in our favor, let the
merits of the case be as they may.”[176] The firm would now gladly have
relinquished their plan of doing the ginning themselves and confined
their operations to the sale of patent rights; but few people would buy
a patent right which could be used with impunity without purchase.

  [174] _Ibid._, p. 26.

  [175] _Ibid._, p. 27.

  [176] _Ibid._, p. 27.

In 1801 South Carolina voted the purchase of the patent rights on the
cotton gin for that state for $50,000, $20,000 to be paid in hand and
the remainder in three annual payments of $10,000 each. A year later
Whitney sold the right for North Carolina. The legislature laid a
tax on every saw, to be continued for five years. After deducting
the expenses of collection, the proceeds were to be passed over to
the patentee. Negotiations were also entered into with the state of
Tennessee. The prospects of the firm were, therefore, growing more
favorable, when the legislature of South Carolina suddenly annulled
the contract, refused payment due, and sued for the refunding of what
had already been paid. Doubts were raised as to the validity of the
patent; the patentees were charged with nonfulfillment of a part of
their contract relating to the submission of models; it was charged
that _somebody_ in Switzerland had conceived of the idea beforehand;
and that Whitney had been antedated in the use of saws instead of wire
teeth by Holmes. This action was the result of the political agitation
against the patent, which was strong throughout the cotton-growing
states. Tennessee followed the example of South Carolina, and the same
attempt was made in North Carolina, but the legislative committee to
whom it was referred reported in Whitney’s favor, declaring that such
action was a breach of contract and of good faith. In 1803 Mr. Miller,
who had represented the firm in the South, died disappointed and broken
by the struggle.

In the following year South Carolina rescinded its action and carried
out its contract, so that from North and South Carolina Whitney
received a considerable sum. In all he received about $90,000; $50,000
from North Carolina; at least $30,000 from South Carolina and about
$10,000 from Tennessee. A large portion of this amount was, however,
balanced by the cost of the endless litigation in Georgia. More than
sixty suits had been instituted in the latter state before the first
decision was obtained on the merits of the claims.

This decision was rendered in the United States Court in December,
1807, by Judge Johnson. Whitney, as the survivor of the firm of Miller
& Whitney, was suing a man named Arthur Fort for violation of the
patent right and for a perpetual injunction restraining him from use
of the gin. Judge Johnson’s decision is so clear a statement of the
situation, and so splendid an example of justice in the face of popular
agitation that we give it nearly in full:

  Defendant admits most of the facts in the bill set forth, but
  contends that the complainants are not entitled to the benefits of
  the act of Congress on this subject, because:

  1st. The invention is not original.

  2d. It is not useful.

  3d. That the machine which he uses is materially different from their
  inventions, in the application of an improvement, the invention of
  another person....

  There are circumstances in the knowledge of all mankind, which prove
  the originality of this invention more satisfactorily to the mind,
  than the direct testimony of a host of witnesses. The cotton plant
  furnished clothing to mankind before the age of Herodotus. The green
  seed is a species much more productive than the black, and by nature
  adapted to a much greater variety of climate. But by reason of the
  strong adherence of the fiber to the seed without the aid of some
  more powerful machine for separating it, than any formerly known
  among us, the cultivation of it would never have been made an object.
  The Machine of which Mr. Whitney claims the invention, so facilitates
  the preparation of this species for use, that the cultivation of
  it has suddenly become an object of infinitely greater national
  importance than that of the other species ever can be. Is it then to
  be imagined that if this machine had been before discovered, the use
  of it would ever have been lost, or could have been confined to any
  tract or country left unexplored by commercial enterprise? But it is
  unnecessary to remark further upon this subject. A number of years
  have elapsed since Mr. Whitney took out his patent, and no one has
  produced or pretended to prove the existence of a machine of similar
  construction or use.

  2d. With regard to the utility of this discovery, the Court would
  deem it a waste of time to dwell long upon this topic. Is there a
  man who hears us, who has not experienced its utility? The whole
  interior of the Southern States was languishing, and its inhabitants
  emigrating for want of some object to engage their attention and
  employ their industry, when the invention of this machine at once
  opened views to them, which set the whole country in active motion.
  From childhood to age it has presented to us a lucrative employment.
  Individuals who were depressed with poverty and sunk in idleness,
  have suddenly risen to wealth and respectability. Our debts have
  been paid off. Our capitals have increased, and our lands trebled
  themselves in value. We cannot express the weight of the obligation
  which the country owes to this invention. The extent of it cannot now
  be seen. Some faint presentiment may be formed from the reflection
  that cotton is rapidly supplanting wool, flax, silk, and even furs
  in manufactures, and may one day profitably supply the use of specie
  in our East India trade. Our sister states, also, participate in the
  benefits of this invention; for, besides affording the raw material
  for their manufactures, the bulkiness and quantity of the article
  afford a valuable employment for their shipping.

  3d. The third and last ground taken by the defendant, appears to be
  that on which he mostly relies. In the specification, the teeth made
  use of are of strong wire inserted into the cylinder. A Mr. Holmes
  has cut teeth in plates of iron, and passed them over the cylinder.
  This is certainly a meritorious improvement in the mechanical process
  of constructing this machine. But at last, what does it amount to
  except a more convenient method of making the same thing? Every
  characteristic of Mr. Whitney’s machine is preserved. The cylinder,
  the iron tooth, the rotary motion of the tooth, the breast work and
  brush, and all the merit that this discovery can assume, is that
  of a more expeditious mode of attaching the tooth to the cylinder.
  After being attached, in operation and effect they are entirely
  the same. Mr. Whitney may not be at liberty to use Mr. Holmes’ iron
  plate, but certainly Mr. Holmes’ improvement does not destroy Mr.
  Whitney’s patent right. Let the decree for a perpetual injunction be
  entered.[177]

  [177] _Ibid._, p. 39.

This decision was confirmed by a series of subsequent ones, and from
that time onward there was no serious questioning of the patent right.

In 1812 Mr. Whitney made application to Congress for the renewal of
his patent. In his memorial he points out that his patent had nearly
expired before it was sustained; that his invention had been a source
of wealth to thousands of citizens of the United States; that the
expense to which he had gone in defense of the patent had left him
little or no return on the invention; that the men who had grown rich
by the use of his machine had combined to prevent the patentee from
deriving reward from his invention; that in the state where he had
first introduced the machines he had received nothing; that from no
state had he received all told an amount equal to ¹⁄₂ cent per pound on
the cotton cleaned by his machine in one year; that the whole amount
received by him for his invention had not been equal to the labor saved
in one hour by the cotton gins then in use in the United States; that
the invention had already trebled the value of land throughout a great
extent of territory; that the degree to which the cultivation of cotton
would still be augmented was incalculable; and that the species of
cotton grown had from time immemorial never been known as an article of
commerce until his method of cleaning it had been invented. He closed
with an argument for the policy of providing adequate reward for the
encouragement of invention.[178] Notwithstanding these arguments and
a favorable committee report, the application was rejected. With the
exception of a few liberal-minded men, nearly all the members from the
cotton-growing states opposed the application strongly.

  [178] _Ibid._, pp. 55-57.

Whitney combined in a singular degree high inventive capacity with
clear judgment and steady determination. By 1798 he saw that his hopes
for any large return from the cotton gin were uncertain. He turned
to the manufacture of firearms and by steady, sure steps built up
another business and died a well-to-do man. In this second enterprise
he developed the interchangeable system of manufacture and thereby
influenced modern society almost as greatly as he had in the invention
of the cotton gin, although this is little realized by the general
public.

In the chapter on “The Rise of Interchangeable Manufacture” we traced
Whitney’s work as a gun manufacturer from 1798, when he first applied
for his contract for ten thousand muskets. His undertaking of this
contract required courage and self-confidence. Although he was not
a trained gun maker, he proposed “from the start” to manufacture
guns by a new method, which was ridiculed by those familiar with the
manufacture of firearms at that time. He had to build a plant, design
and equip it with new and untried types of tools; and to educate
workmen to his methods. Furthermore, he did this work, involving
$134,000, under bond for satisfactory performance. The high estimation
in which Whitney was held by those who knew him is evidenced by the
fact that, although he was already embarrassed and embarking on an
entirely new kind of enterprise, ten of the foremost men of New Haven
signed his bond for the faithful performance of his contract.

A contemporary, intimately acquainted with his work, has outlined his
method of manufacture in words which describe the interchangeable
system, as it exists today, so accurately that we give it in full:

  The several parts of the muskets were, under this system, carried
  along through the various processes of manufacture, in lots of some
  hundreds or thousands of each. In their various stages of progress,
  they were made to undergo successive operations by machinery, which
  not only vastly abridged the labor, but at the same time so fixed
  and determined their form and dimensions, as to make comparatively
  little skill necessary in the manual operations. Such were the
  construction and arrangement of this machinery, that it could be
  worked by persons of little or no experience, and yet it performed
  the work with so much precision, that when, in the later stages of
  the process, the several parts of the musket came to be put together,
  they were as readily adapted to each other, as if each had been made
  for its respective fellow.... It will be readily seen that under such
  an arrangement any person of ordinary capacity would soon acquire
  sufficient dexterity to perform a branch of the work. Indeed, so easy
  did Mr. Whitney find it to instruct new and inexperienced workmen,
  that he uniformly preferred to do so, rather than to attempt to
  combat the prejudices of those who had learned the business under a
  different system.[179]

  [179] _Ibid._, pp. 53-54.

It took him a much longer time to fulfill the contract than he had
anticipated; two years elapsed before his plant was ready. Only 500
guns were delivered the first year instead of 4000, and the entire
contract required eight years instead of two from the time when
he began actual manufacture. In spite of this delay he kept the
confidence of the government officials, who were very liberal in
their treatment of him; so much had been advanced to him to help him
develop his machinery that when the contract was completed only $2450
out of the total of $134,000 remained to be paid. The work was highly
satisfactory, and in 1812 he was awarded another contract for 15,000
muskets from the United States Government and one for a similar number
from the State of New York. What is known of his methods and machinery
is given in the chapter referred to, which shows also how they spread
to other armories throughout the country.

The business which Mr. Whitney started was carried on for ninety years.
After his death in 1825 the armory was managed for ten years by Eli
Whitney Blake, later inventor of the Blake stone crusher, and Philos
Blake, his nephews. From 1835 to 1842 it was managed by ex-Governor
Edwards, a trustee of Mr. Whitney’s estate. His son, Eli Whitney, Jr.,
then became of age and assumed the management, and that same year
obtained a contract for making the “Harper’s Ferry” rifle,--the first
percussion lock rifle, all guns before that date having had flint locks.

Eli Whitney, Jr., continued to develop the art of gun making. He
introduced improvements in barrel drilling and was the first to use
steel for gun barrels. In 1847, during the Mexican War, Jefferson
Davis, then a colonel in a Mississippi regiment, wrote to the
Ordnance Department at Washington, that it was his opinion that the
steel-barreled muskets from the Whitney armory were “the best rifles
which had ever been issued to any regiment in the world.” The Whitney
Arms Company supplied the Government with more than 30,000 rifles
of this model. The company continued in existence until 1888, when
the plant was sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It was
operated by them for a number of years in the manufacture of 22-calibre
rifles. This work was subsequently removed to their main works and the
plant was sold to the Acme Wire Company, and later to the Sentinel Gas
Appliance Company, its present owner. Some of the original buildings
are still standing. It may be of interest to note that at the time the
works were first built, a row of substantial stone houses was built
by Whitney for his workmen, which are said to have been the first
workmen’s houses erected by an employer in the United States.

In person Mr. Whitney was tall and dignified. He had a cultivated mind
and a manner at once refined, frank and agreeable. He was familiar
with the best society of his day and was a friend of every president
of the United States from George Washington to John Quincy Adams. He
had a commanding influence among all who knew him. Seldom has a great
inventor been more sane, for his powers of invention were under perfect
control and never ran wild. Unlike those who devise many things but
complete few, he left nothing half executed. Robert Fulton said that
Arkwright, Watt and Whitney were the three of his contemporaries who
had done the most for mankind.[180] Lord Macaulay is quoted as saying,
“What Peter the Great did to make Russia dominant, Eli Whitney’s
invention of the cotton gin has more than equaled in its relation to
the progress and power of the United States.”[181] He contributed
immeasureably to the agriculture and the manufacturing methods of the
whole world and few mechanics have had a greater influence.

  [180] Blake: “History of Hamden, Conn.,” p. 303.

  [181] Devans: “Our First Century,” p. 153.

Simeon North was born at Berlin, Conn., the same year as Whitney, and
like him, started life as a farmer. In 1795 he began making scythes in
an old mill adjoining his farm. Just when he began making pistols is
not clear. It is said that he made some for private sale as early as
the time of the Revolution, and it is probable that he had begun their
manufacture in a small way prior to receiving his first government
contract. He may have learned the rudiments of the trade from Elias
Beckley, who had a gun shop about a mile from North’s birthplace.[182]

  [182] The fullest account of Simeon North is given in the “Memoir of
  Simeon North,” by S. N. D. North and R. H. North. Concord, N. H.,
  1913.

In March of 1799, about a year after Whitney received his first
contract for muskets, North received his first contract for
horse-pistols, 500, which were to be delivered in one year. This was
followed by others for 1500 in 1800; 2000 in 1802; 2000 in 1808; 1000
in 1810, and others not known. By 1813 he had made at least 10,000 and
was employing forty or fifty men. In none of these contracts was there
any mention made of interchangeability, but some time during these
years North began to use interchangeable methods. The correspondence
quoted in the previous chapter and the quotations already given show
that Whitney was working on the same basis from the start. It is a
great pity that Colonel North’s papers were destroyed after his death,
as they might have thrown some light on the question as to how and when
he began to use interchangeable methods. It is impossible now to say
how much Whitney and North influenced each other if they did at all.
In 1812 the Secretary of War visited North’s shop at Berlin, Conn.,
and urged him to increase his plant. On receiving the contract of
1813, North purchased land in Middletown, Conn., and built a dam and a
three-story brick armory, 86 x 36 feet, on the best lines known at that
time, involving in all an expenditure of $100,000. The old factory was
run in conjunction with the new one until 1843, when it was closed.

North began making barrels of steel in 1848, only a year or two after
Eli Whitney, Jr., and contributed many improvements in the design
of the pistols and guns which he built. The Remington Arms Company,
the Savage Fire Arms Company, the Maynard Rifle Company and the
Massachusetts Arms Company, all trace back in some way to him, and,
like Whitney, he deeply influenced the practice of the United States
Government in its armories at Springfield and Harper’s Ferry.

Colonel North’s first contract with the Government was made in 1799;
his last was finished in 1853, a year after his death, covering in
all about 50,000 pistols and 33,000 rifles. He worked under sixteen
administrations, representing all parties, and in all the fifty-three
years he never received a reproof or a criticism of his work.

He had an old-fashioned sense of honor. In 1826 he was called on to
pay a note for $68,000 which he had indorsed. Although advised that
he could not be held legally, he said that his name was there and he
would stand by it. He placed a mortgage on his property, and it was
twenty-two years before he had made good the loss, which, principal
and interest, amounted to over $100,000. But for this endorsement he
would have died, for that time, a wealthy man. Colonel North was a
country-bred man, strong, quiet and almost painfully modest. He lacked
Whitney’s education and influence, but like him he represented the best
which American mechanical and business life has produced.

CHAPTER XIII

THE COLT ARMORY

The city of Hartford has been more closely identified with the later
development of interchangeable manufacture than almost any other city.
The gun makers have been so vital an element in its industrial life
that, before leaving them, we will trace their influence.

The grist and saw mills, always the pioneers, had made their
appearance in the seventeenth century. With recurring attempts at silk
manufacture, most of the meager industrial life was directed toward
some branch of textiles up to and even after 1800.

In 1747 Col. Joseph Pitkin started a prosperous forge for making
bar iron and a mill for iron slitting. It was killed by the Act of
Parliament of 1750, already referred to, but the Pitkin family balanced
the account by using the buildings during the Revolution to make
powder for the Continental army. Later the buildings were put to their
original use. The Pitkins were industrial leaders for many years in
textiles, and in the manufacture of silverware, clocks, watches, and
heating apparatus. Henry and James F. Pitkin made the old “American
lever” watches in 1834, and many of the early workmen who went to
Waltham were trained by them.

[Illustration: FIGURE 31. SAMUEL COLT]

The assessors’ returns for 1846 to the Secretary of State gave for
Hartford only three “machine factories” with a total capital of
$25,000, an annual output of $35,000, and forty-five men employed.
There were two boiler shops, a screw factory, a plow factory, a pin
factory, two brass and four iron foundries, and one poor gun maker
who did a business of $625 a year. Taken together, these enterprises
averaged only about $15,000 in capital, $20,000 in annual output and
fifteen employees each. This is hardly more than would be expected
in any town of its size, and certainly does not mark the city as a
manufacturing center. Book publishing employed over twice, and clothing
shops more than four times, as many men as all the machine shops
together.

In 1821 Alpheus and Truman Hanks purchased a small foundry and began
the business which later became Woodruff & Beach. This firm had a long
and successful career in building heavy machinery, engines and boilers,
and was among the earliest makers of iron plows. In 1871 it became H.
B. Beach & Son, boiler makers, and the firm is still running, H. L.
Beach being now (1914) the only survivor of the old works.

In 1834 Levi Lincoln started the Phœnix Iron Works. Under various names
(George S. Lincoln & Company, Charles L. Lincoln & Company, The Lincoln
Company, The Taylor & Fenn Company) the business has been maintained
by his descendants to this day. Levi Lincoln invented a number of
machines, among them the first successful hook-and-eye machine for
Henry North of New Britain, which became very valuable and helped to
lay the foundation of the prosperity of that town. George S. Lincoln
& Company built machine tools, architectural iron work and vaults.
Their name is permanently associated with the “Lincoln” miller, which
was first built in 1855 in their shop for the new Colt Armory, from
the design of F. A. Pratt. It was an adaptation and improvement of a
Robbins & Lawrence miller which had been brought to Hartford a year or
two before. Few machines have changed so little or have been used so
widely. It has been said that more than 150,000 of them have been built
in this country and abroad. Even in Europe, the type is definitely
known by this name.

The building of the Colt Armory in 1853 to 1854 marks a definite era
in Hartford’s history and the beginning of manufacturing there on a
large scale. Samuel Colt had an adventurous life, and died in the midst
of his success while less than fifty years old. Born in Hartford in
1814, he had a rather stormy career as a schoolboy and shipped before
the mast to Calcutta before he was sixteen. After his return from this
voyage, he worked for some months in his father’s dye works at Ware,
Mass., where he got a smattering of chemistry. At eighteen he started
out again, this time as a lecturer under the name of “Dr. Coult,”
giving demonstrations of nitrous-oxide, or laughing gas, which was
little known to the public at that time. Dr. Coult’s “lectures” were
frankly popular, with a view more to laughter than the imparting of
knowledge, but he was clever and a good advertiser. It is said that
he gave laughing gas to more men, women and children than any other
lecturer since chemistry was first known. For three years he drifted
over the country from Quebec to New Orleans, getting into all kinds of
experiences, from administering gas for cholera when impressed into
service on account of his assumed title, to fleeing the stage from big
blacksmiths who took laughing gas too seriously and actively.

He made the first crude model of his revolver on his voyage to Calcutta
and used the means derived from his “lectures” for developing the
invention. In 1835 he went to England and took out his first patent
there and on his return in 1836 he took out his first American patent.
These covered a firearm with a rotating cylinder containing several
chambers, to be discharged through a single barrel. The same year,
1836, he organized the Patent Fire Arms Company at Paterson, N. J.,
and tried to get the revolver adopted by the United States Government.
In 1837 an army board reported “that from its complicated character,
its liability to accident, and other reasons, this arm was entirely
unsuited to the general purposes of the service.”

Colt’s first market was secured on the Texas frontier. His earliest
revolvers are known as the Walker and Texas models, and the hold
which he acquired with frontiersmen at that time has never been lost.
The Seminole War in Florida gave Colt an opportunity to demonstrate
the value of the revolver. In 1840 two government boards gave it a
qualified approbation and two small orders followed, one for one
hundred and the other for sixty weapons. The pistols, however, were
expensive, the sales small, and in 1842 the Paterson company failed and
ceased business.

In the next few years the tide turned. The superiority of the revolvers
outstanding was creating a great demand. With the breaking out of the
Mexican War in 1846 came two orders for 1000 pistols each, and from
that time onward Colt’s career was one of rapid and brilliant success.

As his Paterson plant had closed, Colt had the first of the large
government orders made at the Whitney Armory in New Haven, where he
followed minutely every detail of their manufacture. The following
year, 1848, Colt moved to Hartford and for a few years rented a small
building near the center of the city. With rapidly increasing business,
larger quarters soon became necessary.

In 1853 he began his new armory, shown in Fig. 32. South of the city
on the river front, lay an extensive flat, overflowed at high water
and consequently nearly valueless. He purchased a large tract of this,
built a protective dike 30 feet high and 1³⁄₄ miles long, and drained
it. His armory built on this site marks an epoch not only in the
history of Hartford, but in American manufacturing.

After the failure of his first venture at Paterson, Colt had seen the
advantage of interchangeable manufacture at the Whitney shop, and
determined to carry it even further in his new plant. So thoroughly
was this done that the methods crystallized there, and many of the
tools installed have undergone little change to this day. Machine work
almost wholly superseded hand work. Modern machines were developed,
and interchangeability and standards of accuracy given an entirely new
meaning.

The building was in the form of an “H,” 500 feet long and 3¹⁄₂ stories
high. It contained over 1400 machines, the greater part of which were
designed and built on the premises. The tools and fixtures cost about
as much as the machines themselves, a proportion unheard of before.
In 1861 the plant was doubled. Three years later the first building
was burned to the ground, but was immediately rebuilt. This plant was
the largest private armory in the world and far-and-away the best then
existing for economical and accurate production of a high-grade output.
Many rivals have sprung up in the past sixty years, but the Colt Armory
is still one of the leading gun factories of the world.

Colonel Colt was a remarkable man, masterful, daring and brilliant. He
started the larger industrial development of his city, and affected
manufacturing methods more than any other man of his generation.

[Illustration: FIGURE 32. THE COLT ARMORY

FROM AN OLD WOOD-CUT]

One of the elements of his success was his ability to gather and hold
about him men of the highest order. Among these was Elisha K. Root,
one of the ablest mechanics New England has ever produced. Root was
a Massachusetts farmer’s boy, a few years older than Colt. He served
an apprenticeship, worked at Ware and at Chicopee Falls, and came to
the Collins Company, axe makers, at Collinsville, Conn., in 1832. He
began work there as a lathe hand in the repair shop, but very soon
became foreman and virtual superintendent. His inventions and methods
converted a primitive shop into a modern factory and gave the Collins
Company control, for a long time, of the American market, and opened up
a large export trade. In 1845 he was made superintendent, and that same
year was offered three important positions elsewhere, one of them that
of master armorer at Springfield.

In 1849 Colt offered him the position of superintendent at a large
salary. It was characteristic of Colt that, although he was just
starting and still in small rented quarters, he outbid three others to
get the best superintendent in New England. Root moved to Hartford,
designed and built the new armory and installed its machinery. Many of
the machines devised by him at that time are still running, holding
their own in accuracy and economy of production with those of today.
Almost every process used in the plant felt his influence. He invented
the best form of drop hammer then in use, machines for boring, rifling,
making cartridges, stock turning, splining, etc., and worked out the
whole system of jigs, fixtures, tools and gauges. The credit for the
revolver belongs to Colt; for the way they were made, mainly to Root.
Fig. 33, a chucking lathe, and Fig. 34, a splining machine, are two of
Mr. Root’s machines which are still at work. When Colonel Colt died,
Mr. Root became president of the company and continued until his death
in 1865, receiving, it is said, the highest salary paid in the state
of Connecticut. He was a mechanic and inventor of high order, a wise
executive, and the success of the two companies he served was in a
large measure due to him. He was quiet, thoughtful and modest. His
influence went into flesh and blood as well as iron and steel, for
under him have worked F. A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, Charles E. Billings
and C. M. Spencer, George A. Fairfield, of the Hartford Machine Screw
Company, William Mason and a host of others whom we cannot mention
here. Like a parent, a superintendent may be judged, in some measure,
by the children he rears, and few superintendents can show such a
family.

Within a few years after the building of the Colt Armory, manufacturing
at Hartford had taken a definite character. From that day to this
it has centered almost wholly on high-grade products, such as guns,
sewing machines, typewriters, bicycles, automobiles and machine tools.
Naturally, during the past generation, the skilled mechanics of the
city have attracted many new and important industries, only indirectly
connected with the armory, which we cannot consider here.

In 1848 Christian Sharps invented his breech-loading rifle, and in
1851 a company was formed at Hartford to manufacture it. Richard S.
Lawrence came from Windsor, Vt., as its master armorer, and is said
to have brought with him the first miller used in the city. They did
a large business for some years, but later moved to Bridgeport, and
the plant was sold to the Weed Sewing Machine Company. C. E. Billings
and George A. Fairfield, both “Colt men,” were superintendents of this
plant. When the Columbia bicycles were introduced, the Weed Sewing
Machine Company made them for the Pope Manufacturing Company of Boston.
Later this company bought the plant, and it became one of the greatest
bicycle factories in the world. Of late years it has been used for the
manufacture of automobiles.

[Illustration: FIGURE 33. ROOT’S CHUCKING LATHE

ABOUT 1855]

[Illustration: FIGURE 34. ROOT’S SPLINING MACHINE

ABOUT 1855]

Two great industries sprang up in the neighborhood of Hartford in
the early days and had a vigorous life quite independent of it. We
have noted that Levi Lincoln contributed to the establishment of the
hardware industry at New Britain. Although New Britain is but a few
miles from Hartford, its manufactures have moved in a distinctly
different direction. In fact, by 1820 it had taken its character as
a hardware manufacturing center. North & Shipman had begun making
sleigh-bells, hooks and plated goods, and Lee was making buttons and
saddlery hardware. In 1839 Henry E. Russell and Cornelius B. Erwin
became active partners in Stanley, Russell & Company, the beginning
of the Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company. The Stanley Works and
Landers, Frary & Clark had their beginnings in 1842; P. & F. Corbin
in 1848, and the Stanley Rule & Level Company in 1854. About the same
time, Elnathan Peck, after a partnership with George Dewey and Henry
Walter, sold out to J. B. Sargent, who later moved to New Haven. Mr.
Peck also moved to New Haven and started what is now Peck Brothers. It
is a remarkable case of the localization of a great industry. These
companies, all large and important, started within fifteen years in one
small village of only a few thousand inhabitants.

The other industry which started near Hartford but has developed
separately is the manufacture of clocks. Early in the nineteenth
century Eli Terry, first at Windsor, just north of Hartford, and later
at what is now Thomaston, Conn., began using machinery in making wooden
clocks, and by 1840 he had reduced the price for a movement from $50 to
$5. About 1840 Chauncey Jerome, an apprentice of Terry’s, introduced
the one-day brass clock which could be made for less than fifty cents.
In 1842 he shipped his first consignment to England. They were
promptly confiscated at their invoice prices by the customs authorities
for under-valuation. This was perfectly agreeable to Jerome, as it
furnished him with a spot-cash buyer at full price, with no selling
expenses. He therefore sent another and larger shipment, which shared
the same fate. When a third still larger one arrived, the authorities
withdrew from the clock business and let it in. The exports soon spread
everywhere, and today Connecticut manufactures three-fifths of the
clocks produced in the United States.

Nearly all the great clock companies of Connecticut, like the New
Haven, Seth Thomas and Waterbury companies, trace back directly or
indirectly to Jerome and Terry.

CHAPTER XIV

THE COLT WORKMEN--PRATT & WHITNEY

At least two of the superintendents of the Colt Armory should be
mentioned--Prof. Charles B. Richards and William Mason.

Mr. Richards was not primarily a tool builder, but his contributions to
mechanical engineering are too great to pass without notice. About 1860
he helped Charles T. Porter develop the design of the first high-speed
steam engine, and in order to study the action of this engine he
invented the Richards steam engine indicator. Indicators, more or
less crude, had been in use from the time of Watt, but the Richards
indicator was the first one accurate enough and delicate enough to
meet the demands of modern engine practice; and its influence has been
far-reaching. After a few years in New York as a consulting engineer,
he was for many years in the Colt Armory as engineering superintendent
under Mr. Root, and later was superintendent of the Southwark Foundry
& Machine Company in Philadelphia. In 1884 he became Professor of
Mechanical Engineering at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale
University, where he remained for twenty-five years as the head of the
mechanical engineering department.

William Mason was another of those who helped make the Colt Armory
what it was. He was a modest, kindly man, little known outside of his
immediate associates, but of singular fertility in invention and almost
unerring mechanical judgment. He learned his trade with the Remington
Arms Company at Ilion, N. Y., and after a long association with them
he was for sixteen years superintendent of the Colt Armory. In 1885 he
became master mechanic of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New
Haven, and held that position until his death in 1913. He had granted
to him more than 125 patents, most of them in connection with arms and
ammunition and tools for their manufacture, but they included many
appliances for looms and weaving, steam pumps, and bridge work, and he
assisted with the development of the Knowles steam pump and Knowles
looms.

Asa Cook, a brother-in-law of F. A. Pratt, was for years a foreman and
contractor at Colt’s. He was afterwards a designer and manufacturer
of machinery for making wood screws, bolt machinery and many other
types of tools. George A. Fairfield, another Colt foreman, became
superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine factory and later president
of the Hartford Machine Screw Company; another workman, A. F. Cushman,
of the Cushman Chuck Company, for many years manufactured lathe chucks.
In fact, there is hardly a shop in Hartford which dates from the
seventies and eighties which does not trace back in some way to the
Colt Armory. Its influence is by no means confined to Hartford, for
such men as Bullard and Gleason carried its standards and methods to
other cities.

Four of the Colt workmen formed two partnerships of wide influence:
Charles E. Billings and Christopher M. Spencer, who organized the
Billings & Spencer Company, and Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, of
the Pratt & Whitney Company.

Charles E. Billings was a Vermonter, who served his apprenticeship in
the old Robbins & Lawrence shop at Windsor, Vt. When twenty-one, he
came to Colt’s, in 1856, as a die sinker and tool maker and became
their expert on the drop forging process. In 1862 he went to E.
Remington & Sons, where he built up their forging plant, increasing its
efficiency many times, saving $50,000, it is said, by one improvement
in frame forging alone. At the end of the war he returned to Hartford
as the superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine Company, which had
taken over the old Sharps Rifle Works, built by Robbins & Lawrence. For
a short time in 1868 Mr. Billings was at Amherst, Mass., associated
with Spencer in the Roper Repeating Arms Company. The venture was not
a success, and the next year, 1869, they came back to Hartford and
formed the Billings & Spencer Company. This company has probably done
more than any other for the art of drop forging, not only in developing
the modern board drop hammer itself, but in extending the accuracy and
application of the process. Mr. Billings was president of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1895.

Christopher M. Spencer was born at Manchester, Conn. He served his
apprenticeship in the machine shops of the silk mills there from 1847
to 1849, and remained for several years as a journeyman machinist
with Cheney Brothers. In 1853 he went to Rochester, N. Y., to learn
something of the other kinds of machinery, working in a tool building
shop and a locomotive shop. After some years at the Colt Armory he
went back to Cheney Brothers and soon obtained his first patent for an
automatic silk-winding machine. This was adopted by the Willimantic
Linen Company, with some modifications made by Hezekiah Conant, and was
the machine which Pratt & Whitney began manufacturing in their first
rented room in Hartford.

Mr. Spencer has had a passion for firearms from boyhood. In 1860 he
obtained a patent for the Spencer repeating rifle. The Civil War
created a tremendous demand for it, and the Government ordered first
1000, then 10,000, and before the war was over it had purchased about
200,000. In 1862, while the first contracts were pending, Spencer
saw President Lincoln at Washington. He and Lincoln went down on the
White House grounds with the new rifle, set up a board and shot at it.
Lincoln enjoyed it like a schoolboy, and shot well, too. He tore his
coat pocket in the process, but told Spencer not to worry over it, as
he “never had anything of value in it to lose.”

At the close of the war Spencer went to Amherst and was there first
associated with C. E. Billings in the Roper Company, as we noted. A
year later he joined in starting the Billings & Spencer Company and
coöperated with him in the development of the drop hammer.

A successful machine which Spencer invented for turning sewing machine
spools suggested to Spencer the possibility of making metal screws
automatically. The result was his invention of the automatic turret
lathe. The importance of the blank cam cylinder, with its flat strips
adjustable for various jobs, was wholly over-looked by his patent
attorney, with the result that Spencer obtained no patent right on the
most valuable feature in the whole machine.

The importance of this invention can hardly be overestimated. It ranks
with Maudslay’s slide-rest and the turret tool-holder, as it is an
essential feature in all modern automatic lathes, both for bar-stock
and chucking work.

Assured of the success of the machine, Spencer withdrew from active
connection with the Billings & Spencer Company in 1874, and in 1876,
with George A. Fairfield, then superintendent of the Weed Sewing
Machine Company, and others, formed the Hartford Machine Screw Company,
one of the most successful enterprises in the city. Unfortunately, Mr.
Spencer withdrew in 1882 to manufacture a new repeating shotgun and
rifle which he had invented. The gun was a success mechanically, but
the Spencer Arms Company, which had been formed in 1883 at Windsor,
Conn., was a failure, and Mr. Spencer lost heavily. In his later years
Mr. Spencer has returned to the field where he did his most brilliant
work, automatic lathes. He represents the New England mechanic at his
best, and his tireless and productive ingenuity has made a permanent
impress on modern manufacturing methods.

Francis A. Pratt was born at Woodstock, Vt. When he was eight years old
his family moved to Lowell. He was a mechanic from boyhood but he had
the good fortune to be apprenticed as a machinist with Warren Aldrich,
a good mechanic and a wise teacher. At twenty, Mr. Pratt went to
Gloucester, N. J., where he was employed first as a journeyman, later
as a contractor. In 1852 he came to the Colt shop, where he worked for
two years. He then accepted the foremanship of the Phœnix Iron Works,
which was run by Levi Lincoln and his two sons.

Amos Whitney was born in Maine and moved to Lawrence, Mass., where
he served his apprenticeship with the Essex Machine Company which
built cotton machinery, locomotives and machine tools. He came from
a family of mechanics. His father was a locksmith and machinist, his
grandfather was an expert blacksmith, his great-grandfather was a small
manufacturer of agricultural tools, and he is of the same family as Eli
Whitney of New Haven, and Baxter D. Whitney, the veteran tool builder
of Winchendon. In 1850 both he and his father were working at Colt’s
factory at Hartford. In 1854 Amos Whitney joined Pratt in the Phœnix
Iron Works, where they worked together for ten years, the former as
a contractor, the latter as superintendent. Whitney was earning over
eight dollars a day when he left Colt’s and took up the new contract
work which offered at the beginning only two dollars a day.

Many of the shops of that generation were “contract shops.” The
Colt Armory was run on that basis, at least in its manufacturing
departments. Under this system the firm or company furnished all the
materials, machinery, tools, shop room and supplies, while the workmen
were employed by the contractor, their wages being paid by the firm but
charged against the contractor’s account. A better training for future
manufacturers could hardly be devised, and a surprising number of these
old-time contractors have succeeded later in business for themselves.

In the summer of 1860 Pratt and Whitney rented a small room and, in
addition to their regular employment, began doing work on their own
account, i.e., manufacturing the small winder for the Willimantic
Linen Company. Mr. Whitney’s father-in-law acted as pattern maker,
millwright, bookkeeper and general utility man. The following February
they were burned out, but were running again a month later in other
quarters. Here they continued to spread from room to room until all
available space was outgrown. They succeeded from the very start, and
at once became leaders and teachers of other mechanics, suggesters
of new methods of work and of new means for its accomplishment. Both
Pratt and Whitney were thoroughly familiar with gun manufacture, and
the business was hardly started when the outbreak of the Civil War
gave them more than they could do. In 1862 they took into partnership
Monroe Stannard of New Britain, each of the three contributing $1200.
Mr. Stannard took charge of the shop, as Pratt and Whitney were still
with the Phœnix Iron Works. Within two years the business had increased
to such an extent that they gave up their positions at the Phœnix
works and in 1865 erected the first building on their present site.
From $3600 in 1862 their net assets grew in four years to $75,000, and
during the three years following that they earned and put back into the
business more than $100,000. In 1869 the Pratt & Whitney Company was
formed with a capital of $350,000, later increased to $500,000. In 1893
it was reorganized with a capitalization of $3,000,000. Since that time
it has become a part of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company.

[Illustration: FIGURE 35. FRANCIS A. PRATT]

[Illustration: FIGURE 36. AMOS WHITNEY]

Beginning with the manufacture of machine tools and tools for making
guns and sewing machines, they have extended their lines until their
catalog fills hundreds of pages. From their wide experience in
interchangeable manufacture, it was natural that they should take a
prominent part in developing the machinery for the manufacture of
bicycles and typewriters, when, later, these were introduced.

Soon after the Franco-Prussian War, an agent of the company visited
Prussia and found the royal and private gun factories equipped with old
and inferior machinery and the armories bare. Mr. Pratt was sent for,
and returned to Hartford with orders from the German Government for
$350,000 worth of gun machinery. During the next few years Mr. Pratt
made no less than ten trips to Europe, taking orders aggregating over
$2,000,000 worth of machinery. When the panic of 1873 prostrated the
industries of the United States, Pratt & Whitney had orders, mostly
foreign, which kept them busy until 1875. Their equipment of the three
royal armories of Spandau, Erfurt and Danzig resulted in an improvement
in quality of output and a saving of 50 per cent in wages. Pratt &
Whitney’s production of gun-making machinery alone has run into many
millions of dollars, and there are few governments which have not at
one time or another purchased from them.

Pratt & Whitney from the start were leaders in establishing standards,
particularly in screw threads. Their gauges for pipe threads have for
years been the standard for the country. The troubles which arose from
the lack of agreement of standard gauges and the growing demand for
interchangeable bolts and nuts led to a demand on the company for a set
of gauges upon which all could agree.

In undertaking this work Pratt & Whitney examined their own standards
of length with reference to government and other standards in
this country and abroad. The results were conflicting and very
unsatisfactory. By different measurements the same bar would
be reported as above and as below the standard length, and the
investigation produced no results which could be used for a working
basis. At length Prof. William A. Rogers of Harvard University, and
George M. Bond, backed by the Pratt & Whitney Company, developed
the Rogers-Bond comparator with which they determined the length of
the standard foot. When they began, the length of the yard and its
subdivisions varied with the number of yardsticks. Professor Rogers’
work was based on line measurement rather than the end measurement
which had held sway from the time of Whitworth and which is now
generally recognized to be inferior for final reference work. Professor
Rogers went back of all the secondary standards to the Imperial Yard
in London and the standard meter in the Archives at Paris. He obtained
reliable transfers of these, and with the coöperation of the United
States Coast Survey, the most delicate and exhaustive comparisons were
made of the standard bars prepared by him for the use of the company
with the government standard yard designated “Bronze No. 11.” Many
thousands of dollars and three years of time went into this work.

The methods used and the results obtained were examined and reported
upon by a committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
and the conclusion given in their report is as follows:

  The completion of the Rogers-Bond comparator marks a long stride
  in advance over any method hitherto in use for comparison and
  subdivision of line-measure standards, combining, as it does, all the
  approved methods of former observers with others original with the
  designers. Comparisons can thus be checked thoroughly by different
  systems, so that the final result of the series may be relied on as
  being much nearer absolute accuracy than any hitherto produced.

  The calipering attachment to the comparator deserves special
  commendation, being simple in the extreme, and solving completely the
  problem of end measurements within the limit of accuracy attainable
  in line reading, by means of the microscope with the micrometer
  eye-piece. The standard to which the end measurements are referred is
  not touched, and each measurement is referred back to the same zero,
  so that error from end wear does not enter into the problem. This
  attachment is in advance of all hitherto known methods of comparing
  end measures, either with other end measures or with line standards,
  both as to rapidity of manipulation and accuracy of its readings,
  the strong point in its construction being that it refers all end
  measures to a carefully divided and investigated standard bar, which
  is not touched during its use, and cannot be in the slightest degree
  injured by this service, thus giving convincing assurance that
  the measures and gauges produced by its use will be accurate and
  interchangeable.

  In the opinion of this committee, the degree of accuracy already
  attained is such that no future improvements can occasion changes
  sufficiently great to affect the practical usefulness of the
  magnitudes here determined, or the interchangeability of structures
  based upon them with those involving further refinement.

  Prof. W. A. Rogers and Mr. George M. Bond are unquestionably entitled
  to great credit for the admirable manner in which they have solved
  the problem of exact and uniform measurement, while the enterprise
  of the Pratt & Whitney Company in bringing the whole matter into
  practical shape, is deserving of the thanks of the engineering
  community.[183]

  [183] Those interested may find detailed descriptions of the methods
  used and of the Rogers-Bond comparator in the following references:
  George M. Bond: Paper on “Standard Measurements,” Trans. A. S. M.
  E., Vol. II, p. 80. George M. Bond: Paper on “A Standard Gauge
  System,” Trans. A. S. M. E., Vol. III, p. 122. Report of Committee
  on Standards and Gauges, Trans. A. S. M. E., Vol. IV, p. 21 (quoted
  above). W. A. Rogers: Paper, “On a Practical Solution of the
  Perfect Screw Problem,” Trans. A. S. M. E., Vol. V, p. 216. Two
  lectures delivered by George M. Bond before the Franklin Institute,
  Philadelphia, in 1884, on: 1. “Standards of Length and their
  Subdivision.” 2. “Standards of Length as Applied to Gauge Dimensions.”

The standards so obtained became the basis of the gauges which Pratt &
Whitney have produced.

In 1888 the company received its first order for Hotchkiss revolving
cannon, and for three- and six-pounders rapid-fire guns. They have made
hundreds of these guns for the secondary batteries of war vessels.
In 1895 they brought out a one-pounder invented by E. G. Parkhurst,
an expert mechanic, who had entered their employment as assistant
superintendent in 1869 and later took charge of their gun department.

For many years the Pratt & Whitney tool-room lathes were the standard
for the country. Later their leadership was materially affected by the
Hendey Machine Company of Torrington, Conn., who built a high grade
tool-room lathe having the change-gear box which has since been applied
to nearly all types of machine tools. The change-gear box is one of the
important contributions to tool building made in recent years. Among
the later developments introduced by Pratt & Whitney is the process of
thread milling, and they have designed a full line of machines for this
work.

The Pratt & Whitney works, like the Colt Armory, has been a training
school for successful tool builders. Worcester R. Warner and Ambrose
Swasey were both foremen at Pratt & Whitney’s and left there to go
west, first to Chicago and then to Cleveland. Some account of these two
men will be given in a later chapter. Pratt & Whitney have had a marked
influence on tool building in Cleveland, for, in addition to Warner and
Swasey, E. C. Henn and Hakewessel of the National Acme Manufacturing
Company who developed the multi-spindle automatic lathe, A. F. Foote
of Foote, Burt & Company, and George C. Bardons of Bardons & Oliver,
come from their shop. Johnston of Potter & Johnston, Pawtucket, was
chief draftsman at Pratt & Whitney’s; and J. N. Lapointe who later
developed the broaching machine, Dudley Seymour of Chicago, Gleason of
the Gleason Works in Rochester, E. P. Bullard of Bridgeport, and F.
N. Gardner of Beloit, Wis., inventor of the Gardner grinder, were all
workmen there.

Mr. Gleason was also a workman in the Colt Armory. He went to Rochester
in 1865 and the works which he developed form the most important tool
building interest in western New York. There have been “a good many
starts there in tool building and almost as many finishes.” Mr. Gleason
always said that but for the training and methods he had gained at
Hartford he would have shared their fate. Like many others, his company
began with a general line of machine tools but has come to specialize
on one type of machine, bevel-gear cutters, of which they build a most
refined type.

E. P. Bullard, like Gleason, worked at both Colt’s and Pratt &
Whitney’s. Later he formed a partnership with J. H. Prest and
William Parsons, manufacturing millwork and “all kinds of tools”
in Hartford. In 1866 he organized the Norwalk Iron Works Company
of Norwalk, but afterwards withdrew and continued the business in
Hartford. For a number of years Mr. Bullard was in the South and
Middle West, at Athens, Ga., at Cincinnati, where he organized the
machine tool department of Post & Company, and at Columbus, where
he was superintendent of the Gill Car Works. In 1875 he established
a machinery business in Beekman Street, New York, under the firm
name of Allis, Bullard & Company. Mr. Allis withdrew in 1877 and the
Bullard Machine Company was organized. Recognizing a demand for a high
grade lathe he went to Bridgeport, Conn., and engaged A. D. Laws to
manufacture lathes of his design, agreeing to take his entire output.
In the latter part of the same year Mr. Bullard took over the business
and it became the Bridgeport Machine Tool Works. In 1883 he designed
his first vertical boring and turning mill, a single head, belt feed
machine of 37 inches capacity. This is believed to be the first small
boring machine designed to do the accurate work previously performed
on the face plate of a lathe. Up to that time boring machines were
relied on only for large and rough work. In 1889 he transferred his
New York connections to J. J. McCabe and gave his entire attention to
manufacturing, the business being incorporated as the Bullard Machine
Tool Company in 1894.

The building of boring mills gradually crowded out the lathes, and for
twenty years the company has concentrated on the boring machine as a
specialty. In their hands it has received a remarkable development.
They introduced a range of small-sized mills capable of much more
accurate work than had been done on this type of machine. They applied
the turret principle to the head carried on the cross rail and a few
years later introduced a mill having a head carried on the side of
the frame which permitted of the close working of the tools. These
improvements transformed the boring mill into a manufacturing machine,
and it became practically a vertical turret lathe with the advantages
inherent in that type of machine. This trend toward the lathe type
has finally resulted in a multiple station-type of machine which is
in effect a vertical multi-spindle automatic chucking lathe with five
independent tool heads, as shown in Fig. 56. Comparison of this with
Fig. 15, shows how the lathe has developed in the 115 years since
Maudslay introduced the slide-rest principle and the lead screw.

CHAPTER XV

ROBBINS & LAWRENCE

A glance at the genealogical chart, Fig. 37, will show why the old
Robbins & Lawrence shop, at Windsor, Vt., in the backwoods of northern
New England, deserves a special chapter. When built, it was miles away
from a railroad. It was never large, and the wheels of the original
shop have long since ceased to turn, but few plants have had so great
an influence on American manufacturing. Three brilliant mechanics,
Lawrence, Howe and Stone, were working there in the early fifties, and
from them and their successors came wholly, or in part, the vertical
lathe turret, the miller, the profiler and a large number of the modern
machines used in interchangeable manufacture. Of these three, Lawrence
went to Hartford, Howe to Providence, while Stone remained at Windsor.
In each case an important line of influence may be traced.

In the region about Windsor, sixty or seventy years ago, there were a
number of small custom gun shops, and one firm, N. Kendall & Company,
was regularly making guns at the Windsor prison, using prison labor
in addition to that of a number of free mechanics, who did the finer
work. The history of the Robbins & Lawrence Company begins about 1838,
when Lawrence came to Windsor from the neighborhood of Watertown, N.
Y. Fortunately he wrote out an account of his life shortly before his
death, at the request of his son, giving a very interesting record
of his early work and his connections with his various manufacturing
enterprises. This account shows clearly the integrity, modesty and
worth of the man.[184]

  [184] By the courtesy of Mr. Ned Lawrence this account is given in
  Appendix A. It has never been published before.

                      N. KENDALL & CO. R. S LAWRENCE
                      Kendall & Lawrence
                      Custom Gun Shop, Windsor, Vt.
                                  *1*

                                  #1#
                          ROBBINS & LAWRENCE
           Guns and Gun Machinery, Turret Lathes, Millers, etc.
           R S. Lawrence, H. D. Stone, F. W. Howe
                             *2 3 4 5 6 7*

           #2#                                       #7#
  ENFIELD GUN MACHRY., 1855                   CHAS. E. BILLINGS
      Enfield, England                       Billings & Spencer,
                                             Hartford

                             #5#
                       LAMSON, GOODNOW &
         #3#               YALE, 1859         #6#
  SHARPS RIFLE WORKS  later                PROVIDENCE     J. R. BROWN
  Hartford, Conn.     E. G. LAMSON & CO.   TOOL WORKS     S. B. DARLING,
         *8*          Guns, Sewing         F. W. Howe,    ETC.
                      Machines, Machine    Supt.,             *12*
                      Tools,               1853-68
                      Windsor               *10 11*
                             *9*

                        #4#
                   J. D. ALVORD
           a contractor in R. & L. Shop,
           Hartford & Sharpe Wks. Built the
           Wheeler & Wilson Shop,
           Bridgeport
                       *13*

        #8#                      #9#                    #11 12#
  WEED SEWING MACH.  Sewing Machine business sold    BROWN & SHARPE
        CO.          about 1861 to Mr. White       F. W. Howe, Supt.,
  Hartford, Conn.              *15 16*             1868-73
        *14*                                       Plain and Univ.
                                                   Millers, Turret
                                                   Lathes

        #14#                                           #10#
   POPE MFG. CO.                               RHODE ISLAND TOOL CO.
  Hartford, Conn.                          Successors of Providence Tool
                                           Works

                #13#
          WHEELER & WILSON                      PUTNAM MACH. CO.
          Bridgeport, Conn.                     Fitchburg, Mass.
          Sewing Machines                       S. C. Wright
                                                     *17*

        #15#                      #16#                  #19#
  WHITE SEWING MACH.     WINDSOR MANUFACTURING    SULLIVAN MACHRY. CO.
        CO.                       CO.              Claremont, N. H.
    Cleveland, O.                1865              Mine and Quarrying
        *20*                    *18 19*            Machinery

        #20#                   #18 21#
  CLEVELAND AUTO MACH.   JONES, LAMSON & CO.,      JAMES HARTNESS
      CO., ETC.                  1869                   1889
    Cleveland, O.       JONES & LAMSON MACHINE        *21 22*
                               CO., 1879
       #23 28#          Moved from Windsor to        #17 22 25 27#
  WINDSOR MACHINE CO.   Springfield, Vt., in      FITCHBURG MACH. WORKS
  Windsor, Vt., 1889,   1889                        Fitchburg, Mass.
  Gridley Automation    Hartness Flat Turret,       Lo-Swing Lathe
                        Fay Automatic Lathes
                               *23 24*

                                 #24#
                           JAMES HARTNESS
       #29#                    *25 27*                 #26#
  BRYANT CHUCKING          E. R. FELLOWS           FELLOWS GEAR
    GRINDER CO.                 *26*                SHAPER CO.
  Springfield, Vt.         G. O. GRIDLEY         Springfield, Vt.
                                *28*
                           Wm. BRYANT
                                *29*

FIGURE 37. GENEALOGY OF THE ROBBINS & LAWRENCE SHOP]

Richard S. Lawrence, whose portrait appears in Fig. 40, was born
in Chester, Vt., in 1817. When two years old, his father moved to
Jefferson County, N. Y., and his boyhood was spent in the neighborhood
of Watertown. He was only nine years old when his father died, and
consequently he had a hard boyhood, with very little schooling, and was
early at work in the support of the family. He worked on a farm and
later in a woodworking shop, making carpenter’s and joiner’s tools.
In the basement of this place was a custom gun shop, where he spent
much of his spare time and became an expert gun maker. He worked with
indifferent success at various jobs until the winter of 1837-1838, when
he served in the United States army for three months, guarding the
frontier during the Canadian Rebellion. At his discharge he determined
to start in elsewhere for himself and thought of his relatives in
Vermont. After a long journey by the Erie Canal, the newly built Albany
& Schenectady Railroad, and by stage, he reached Windsor in 1838.

A week or two after his arrival, while visiting a Doctor Story, he
undertook to repair an old rifle, a “Turkey rifle,” made by the
doctor’s brother in a gun shop in the neighborhood, and put on a
peep-sight, a thing never heard of before in that neighborhood. He took
the gun apart, leaded out the barrel, forged and finished the sight
and put it on the gun. His skill in handling tools astonished those
who watched him. Two days later, when the work was done, the doctor
and Lawrence went out to try the gun. They paced off twelve rods from
a maple tree which had a three-quarter-inch auger hole in it that
had been used for a sap spout. Lawrence did the shooting. His own
account of it is as follows: “The doctor tended target. Could find no
ball hole. Said I missed the tree. I fired again, no ball hole to be
found. Doctor came up to me and said I had spoiled his rifle. Before
my repairs he could kill a chicken every time at twelve rods. I said,
‘Uncle, I am very sorry, but I will make the gun all right before I
leave it.’ He said he could not consent to my doing anything more to
improve the shooting qualities--the sight he liked very much. I said
that as the gun was loaded I would take one more shot and see if I
could not hit the tree. After the third shot I went up to the tree to
investigate, and all of the three balls which I had fired were found in
the auger hole.”[185] The doctor was astonished, for he had never heard
of such shooting.

  [185] Quoted from the full account given in Appendix A.

The next day he took Lawrence down to see N. Kendall & Company, who
were making guns at the Windsor prison. They hired him at once for two
years at $100 a year. His first work was stocking rifles by hand and
the first day he put on five stocks. The next day the superintendent
looked over the work and said it was well done, but it would never do
to rush the work as he had, for he would “soon gun-stock them out of
town,” and he “must take it more easy.” In the course of the next six
months, he had so far mastered every process in the factory, even that
of engraving in which he could soon compete with the oldest hands, that
he was put in charge of the shop. Four years later the company gave up
the gun business, and for a time Lawrence remained as foreman of the
carriage department in the prison shop.

In 1843 Kendall and Lawrence hired a small shop in Windsor village
and started a custom gun shop. In the winter of 1844 S. E. Robbins, a
business man, came to them and said that the Government was in the
market for 10,000 rifles. The matter was talked over, a partnership
formed, and a bid sent to Washington. In spite of the opposition of
nearly all the other Government contractors, who said they could never
do the work, it resulted in the award of a contract for 10,000 to
Robbins, Kendall & Lawrence, at $10.90 each, attachments extra, to be
furnished within three years.

They bought land, built a shop, and bought or made the necessary
machinery. It was in the performance of this and the subsequent
contract that many of the early machine tools were developed. The
contract was finished eighteen months ahead of time, at a good profit,
and they obtained a second contract for 15,000 at the same price.
Soon after finishing the first contract, Robbins and Lawrence bought
out Kendall’s interest in the firm, which became Robbins & Lawrence.
The business proved very profitable. About 38 per cent of their work
for the Government had to be rejected on account of poor material
and workmanship, but the California gold excitement was then at its
height and guns were in great demand. They were therefore able to sell
their second-quality work for the full government price. About 1850
they contracted with Courtland C. Palmer for 5000 Jennings rifles, a
gun which later developed through the Henry rifle into the present
well-known Winchester rifle.

About 1850 Robbins & Lawrence took the first of the steps which led to
their undoing. The railroad had just been completed through Windsor,
and S. F. Belknap, a large railroad contractor, induced them to start
in the car business, which, of course, had no rational relation with
their main activity of building guns. Mr. Belknap assured them that he
could control all the car work in that section, and put in $20,000 as
a silent partner. The firm went to a large outlay, but just as they
were finishing the first cars, Belknap quarreled with the president of
the railroad and the firm could not sell a single car when they had
expected to. After a considerable delay they were sold to other roads,
and stock which proved valueless was taken in payment. The operation
involved an actual loss of $134,000, which was later increased to
nearly $240,000.

[Illustration: FIGURE 38. ROBBINS & LAWRENCE ARMORY, WINDSOR, VT.

FROM AN OLD LITHOGRAPH]

In all of their gun work, Robbins & Lawrence used the interchangeable
system, and they contributed very largely to its development. Lawrence,
Howe, and later Stone, were constantly improving the methods of
manufacture. Fitch’s article on Interchangeable Manufacture in the
U. S. Census Report of 1880, describes and illustrates a profiling
machine built by Howe as early as 1848. The design shown there was used
for many years throughout all the gun shops in the country. He also
designed a barrel drilling and rifling machine, and he and Lawrence
designed and built a plain miller, which was the forerunner of the
well-known Lincoln miller. One of these millers, built in 1853, is
still running in the shop of the North Brothers Manufacturing Company
in Philadelphia. This machine had a rack-and-pinion feed for the
table, which chattered badly when starting a heavy cut. The principal
improvement which F. A. Pratt introduced in the Lincoln miller was the
substitution for this of a screw and nut. The original drawing of this
Robbins & Lawrence machine is still on file in the office of the Jones
& Lamson Machine Company and shows clearly that it furnished the basis
of the design of the Lincoln miller.

In 1851 Robbins & Lawrence sent to the Exposition in London a set
of rifles built on the interchangeable system, which excited great
interest and for which they received a medal. This led to the visit of
an English commission which resulted in a large contract to Robbins &
Lawrence for Enfield rifles, and for gun machinery which was installed
in the Armory at Enfield, near London. It has been said that this
contract caused the failure of Robbins & Lawrence. This is not true.

In 1852 the company contracted to make 5000 Sharps carbines at Windsor,
and 15,000 rifles and carbines at a plant which they were to erect in
Hartford. The Sharps Company advanced $40,000 to enable them to build a
new factory and Mr. Lawrence moved to Hartford in 1853 to superintend
the building and equipment of the plant. Shortly after it was
completed, Robbins & Lawrence, already strained by their losses in the
car-building venture and with the erecting of the new plant, undertook
a contract with Fox, Henderson & Company for 25,000 Minié rifles. They
were assured by the agent that he had in his pockets contracts for
300,000 more, which he promised them on the completion of the 25,000.
Lawrence objected strenuously to signing the contract for the 25,000
without more assurance as to the 300,000 to follow, as the outlay
for the work would greatly exceed the profits on the first contract.
It was signed, however, and it later developed that the agent had no
authorization for the 300,000. It was this which caused the failure of
Robbins & Lawrence.

Mr. Lawrence left the firm and took charge of the new Hartford plant
which had been bought by the Sharps Rifle Company. J. D. Alvord, one
of the contractors at Hartford under Lawrence, later built the Wheeler
& Wilson plant at Bridgeport. Robbins and others leased the Windsor
shops and began the manufacture of sewing machines. In 1859 the plant
and business were purchased by Lamson, Goodnow & Yale, who retained
Henry D. Stone as their mechanical expert. During the Civil War the
plant was given over entirely to the manufacture of army rifles, and
the sewing-machine business was sold to Mr. White of the White Sewing
Machine Company of Cleveland, Ohio.

In the early thirties Silas Lamson had begun manufacturing scythe
snaths in one of the hill towns of western Massachusetts. Up to that
time the farmers had either used straight poles or those which happened
naturally to have a convenient twist. Lamson conceived the idea of
steaming the poles and bending them to a predetermined curve. About
1840 his sons, Nathan and E. G. Lamson, moved to Shelburne Falls and
after some years began the manufacture of cutlery, founding the factory
which has been in successful operation ever since. After the completion
of the railroad through Windsor, they moved their snath factory to that
place. They and their successors, the Lamson & Goodnow Manufacturing
Company, continued this work there for many years. When the Robbins
& Lawrence property was put on the market it was purchased by E. G.
Lamson, A. F. Goodnow and B. B. Yale, under the name of Lamson, Goodnow
& Yale. E. G. Lamson & Company and the Windsor Manufacturing Company
succeeded this firm and continued the manufacture of machine tools and
Ball and Palmer carbines, and completed a number of government rifle
contracts. In 1869 R. L. Jones, a business man, of the Ascutney Mill
at Windsor, joined the firm, which became Jones, Lamson & Company, and
a small cotton mill was added to their other activities. Ten years
later the Jones & Lamson Company was organized to take over the machine
business. During all these changes Henry D. Stone continued as the
designer. A large poster of the Windsor Manufacturing Company, printed
some time about 1865, shows that they had plenty of irons in the fire,
for they were prepared to furnish guns and machinery for manufacturing
guns, sewing machines and needles, a standard line of hand-operated
turret lathes, plain and index millers, planers, trimming presses,
drill presses, sawmills, rock drills and mining machinery. Later their
mining and quarry-machinery business was moved to Claremont, N. H., and
became the Sullivan Machinery Company.

In 1889 the present Jones & Lamson Machine Company moved to
Springfield, Vt., where it now is. That same year, James Hartness
entered the employment of the company as superintendent. With his
advent the scattering of activities ceased and the Jones & Lamson
Machine Company began concentrating on turret lathes, which Robbins
& Lawrence and their various successors have been manufacturing
continuously since the early fifties. A number of the old mechanics and
foremen, who had homes in Windsor at the time the company was moving to
Springfield, took over the old shops and organized the present Windsor
Machine Company which now manufactures the Gridley Automatic Lathes.

This, briefly, is the history of the old Robbins & Lawrence shop. The
men, however, who worked with Robbins & Lawrence and its successors,
are of greater interest.

While Lawrence continued as master-armorer of the Sharps Rifle Works,
the company was successful financially. Fitch, in the Census article
frequently referred to, says that he brought with him “from Windsor the
first plain milling machine used in Hartford.” Lawrence also applied
the broaching process to the manufacture of Sharps rifles, effecting
great economies, and was the inventor of the split pulley which was
first made for him at Lincoln’s Phœnix Iron Works. In the winter of
1850 Lawrence introduced the practice of lubricating rifle bullets with
tallow, making possible the repeating rifle which had been a failure
up to that time as the barrel “leaded” and the gun lost its accuracy.
This was done in connection with some trials of the Jennings rifle
during the visit of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, who was in
this country for the supposed purpose of purchasing rifles.[186] Mr.
Lawrence left the Sharps company in 1872 and was for many years an
official in the city of Hartford, as Superintendent of Streets and on
the Water and Fire Boards. He died in 1892.

  [186] See Appendix B.

The Sharps Rifle Works, after Lawrence’s retirement, were bought by
the Weed Sewing Machine Company, and later by the Pope Manufacturing
Company, who extended it greatly for the manufacture of the Columbia
bicycle.

Frederick W. Howe, the second of the Robbins & Lawrence mechanics
mentioned, whose portrait appears in Fig. 39, learned his trade in the
old Gay & Silver shop at North Chelmsford. We have seen in a previous
chapter the connection of this company, through Ira Gay, with the early
mechanics at Pawtucket. It is an interesting and perhaps significant
fact that both milling machines and turret lathes were in use in this
shop, probably at the time when Howe worked there. Howe was first
a draftsman and later superintendent at Windsor and was intimately
associated with the designing there at that time. The Jones & Lamson
Machine Company still have drawings of machine tools made by him as
early as 1848. As both Lawrence and Howe were designing in the Windsor
shop at that period, it is difficult today to apportion the credit
between them.

When Robbins & Lawrence failed, Howe went to Providence as
superintendent of the Providence Tool Company and his work there
contributed greatly to the success of that firm. While with both
Robbins & Lawrence and the Providence Tool Company, he worked on the
turret-head screw machine and the plain miller. The first screw
machine brought out by Brown & Sharpe in 1861 was built for Mr. Howe.
Joseph R. Brown added certain valuable features to it, but the parts
for the first machine were said to have been cast from Howe’s patterns.
Howe invented and built a universal milling machine,[187] but it should
not be confused with what is now known as the “universal” miller, which
was first built by Brown & Sharpe, also in 1861, for Mr. Howe to mill
the flutes in twist drills. The distinction between these two machines
has been pointed out by Mr. Burlingame. The No. 12 plain miller which
Brown & Sharpe build today was designed by Howe, and for many years was
known as the “Howe” type of miller. From 1868 to 1873 Mr. Howe was the
superintendent of Brown & Sharpe, and built the first building on their
present site. Later he started in business for himself as a consulting
mechanical engineer and was designing a typewriter (which was never
built) at the time of his death. He was a smooth-faced, well-dressed
man, with a restless inventive mind, apt to change things frequently,
improving each time, however, and when he finished anything it was
thoroughly done. He left a deep impress on mechanical development in
this country, and while Lawrence was perhaps the best mechanic, Howe
was probably the ablest of the three men connected with the early
Robbins & Lawrence history.

  [187] Illustrated in the _American Machinist_ of August 13, 1914. See
  also p. 208.

[Illustration: FIGURE 39. FREDERICK W. HOWE]

[Illustration: FIGURE 40. RICHARD S. LAWRENCE]

Henry D. Stone was born in 1815 and died at Windsor in 1898. He learned
his trade as a millwright at Woodstock, Vt., but soon afterward came
to Robbins & Lawrence. He remained with them and their successors
for the rest of his career, more than thirty years. He has been
very generally credited with the invention of the vertical turret
as applied to the lathe, but the idea was by no means original with
him. In 1845 a horizontal turret was designed and built by Stephen
Fitch at Middlefield, Conn., to manufacture percussion locks for
the United States Government. This machine is illustrated in the
_American Machinist_ of May 24, 1900. It had a horizontal axis with
eight positions for as many tools. In the same magazine for November
28, 1908, two turret lathes are illustrated and described, one with a
vertical and the other with a horizontal turret, both of which were in
use in the Gay & Silver shop at an early date, probably in the forties,
at the time Howe was there as an apprentice. The horizontal turret
principle was also in use by E. K. Root at the Colt Armory,[188] and J.
D. Alvord is said to have used a turret screw machine in the Hartford
plant in 1853. There is little doubt that both Howe and Lawrence had
something to do with the development of the turret lathe at Windsor.
The turret designs which Howe had built for him a few years later in
Providence are all along the same lines. Stone unquestionably had a
share in the development of the turret, for he made the drawing of the
first Robbins & Lawrence turret machines and continued for many years
the development of the turret lathe for the various companies which
successively operated in Windsor. With the turret screw machine came
the box-tool and hollow mill. _Machinery_ of May, 1912, illustrated and
described a box-tool, fitted with two back rests and two cutting tools,
which was made by Robbins & Lawrence at Windsor in 1850.

  [188] See Fig. 33. See also the valuable article by E. G. Parkhurst
  in the _American Machinist_, of May 24, 1900, p. 489, referred to
  above.

The second period in the history of this company, or succession of
companies, begins with the coming of James Hartness to the Jones &
Lamson Machine Company in 1889. Mr. Hartness was born in Schenectady
in 1861 and learned his trade by “picking it up,” first with Younglove,
Massey & Company, of Cleveland, where his father was superintendent,
and then in the machine shop of the Union Steel Screw Works. In the
latter shop he first came in contact with close, accurate work. The
practice of this company was due to Jason A. Bidwell, who came from the
American Screw Company, in Providence, which we have referred to in a
previous chapter. Three years later Mr. Hartness went to the Lake Erie
Iron Works as tool maker. In 1882 he went to Winsted, Conn., as foreman
in the Thomson, Stacker Bolt Company, and in 1885 to the Union Hardware
Company of Torrington, manufacturers of gun implements, first as tool
maker, then foreman, and later as inventor. During the year 1888 he
worked for a few months at the Pratt & Whitney shop in Hartford,
at Scottdale, Pa., and with the Eaton, Cole & Burnham Company, in
Bridgeport. He went to the Jones & Lamson Machine Company in February,
1889, the year in which they moved to their present location at
Springfield, Vt. He was first superintendent until 1893, then manager
until 1900, and president from then on.

During these years Mr. Hartness has become one of the most influential
designers of machine tools of this generation and in 1914 he was
president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. When he
went to Windsor, the Jones & Lamson Machine Company was manufacturing
principally a standard type of high-turret lathe, lever-operated,
with power feed and back gears. Mr. Hartness immediately began an
investigation of the problem which resulted in the invention of the
Hartness flat-turret lathe and many improvements in the details of the
tools used on it. While Mr. Hartness was developing certain details
of the turret construction, he found in the records of the company
sketches of the identical mechanism, made by Howe nearly forty years
before, which show not only that Howe was engaged in turret-lathe
design but that he was a generation ahead of his time.

[Illustration: FIGURE 41. JAMES HARTNESS]

Under Mr. Hartness’ management, the Jones & Lamson Machine Company have
concentrated on a single design of machine which they have developed
to the utmost. Rather than be diverted from this single object, he
has, as new inventions have come up, helped others to develop them
independently. The result has been that while the Jones & Lamson
Machine Company, with one exception, has confined its attention to
flat-turret lathes, a number of important machines, which have sprung
from men connected with that company, are now being manufactured by
other firms.

The Fellows gear shaper is one of these machines. Mr. Fellows’ career
is a problem to those who are interested in the training of mechanics.
He was a window dresser in a dry goods store in Torrington and also
ran the carpet department. When Mr. Hartness came to Springfield, Mr.
Fellows, then twenty-two years old, came with him. Without any previous
mechanical training or technical education he worked for one week in
the shop, slotting screw heads, and then went into the drawing room.
He succeeded so well here that in a short time he was chief draftsman.
In 1896 he invented his gear shaper, the Fellows Gear Shaper Company
was organized, and has been in successful operation ever since. As the
theory underlying this invention is of a very refined order and the
problems involved in its manufacture have been worked out with great
skill, one would expect it to be the product of long experience and
high technical training. That Mr. Fellows should have brought out so
refined a machine within a few years from the time he first turned
his attention to mechanical matters is a remarkable tribute to his
qualities as a machine designer.

Mr. George O. Gridley is another mechanic who worked under Mr. Hartness
at Springfield. He developed the single- and later the multi-spindle
automatic lathes which are now manufactured by the Windsor Machine
Company in the new plant which has been built near the old Robbins &
Lawrence shop at Windsor. The original plant of the fifties is now used
as a club house for the men.

The Lo-Swing lathe, manufactured by the Fitchburg Machine Works at
Fitchburg, was invented by Mr. Hartness. The Fitchburg Machine Works
was founded in the early sixties by Sylvester C. Wright, who came from
the Putnam Machine Works. For many years they manufactured a general
line of machine tools, but they now confine their attention entirely to
the Lo-Swing lathe.

The Bryant chucking grinder, invented by William L. Bryant, is another
machine which has sprung from the Jones & Lamson shop of recent
years. It is manufactured by a separate company, the Bryant Chucking
Grinder Company, also at Springfield, Vt. The Fay automatic lathe,
now manufactured by Jones & Lamson Company, is the exception to their
policy of concentration on the flat turret. Like the Lo-Swing, it
is intended for work which cannot be done on the flat-turret lathe,
more particularly such pieces as are carried on mandrels. The cutting
tools are controlled by cams and a cam drum. Like the Lo-Swing, it is
intended to supplement the field of the turret lathe and to give the
advantage of multiple tools, constant setting, and automatic operation
for work which could not be put upon a turret machine.

We have followed the four main lines of influence from the old shop
at Windsor; one, through Lawrence, to Hartford; one, through Howe,
to Providence; one, through Stone and later Gridley, at Windsor; and
the fourth, through Hartness and the Jones & Lamson Machine Company
to Springfield. Another line of influence comes through Charles E.
Billings, who learned his trade under Robbins & Lawrence, went to the
Colt Armory, and as we have seen elsewhere, founded the Billings &
Spencer Company. Like Mr. Hartness, he also has been a president of
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. There are other lines of
influence in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere which we cannot follow
out here.

CHAPTER XVI

THE BROWN & SHARPE MANUFACTURING COMPANY

Two companies, both in New England, have been conspicuous for their
leadership in tool building and the introduction of precision methods
in manufacture. One of them, the Pratt & Whitney Company, we have
considered. The other, the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, of
Providence, calls also for special notice.

It was founded in 1833 by David Brown and his son Joseph R. Brown.[189]
For nearly twenty years its business comprised the making and repairing
of clocks, watches and mathematical instruments, in a small shop
without power. Its influence was hardly more than local and only
fourteen persons were employed in 1853, when Lucian Sharpe was taken
into the partnership, and the firm became J. R. Brown & Sharpe.[190]

  [189] David Brown retired in 1841. For the early history of David and
  Joseph R. Brown see Van Slyck: “Representative Men of New England.”

  [190] The writer would acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. L. D.
  Burlingame for much of the material in this chapter.

The real development of the business had begun a few years before. In
1850 J. R. Brown had invented and built a linear dividing engine which
was, so far as is known, the first automatic machine for graduating
rules used in the United States. It was fully automatic, adapted to
a wide variety of work, and provided with devices for correcting the
inaccuracies of the machine as built, and such as might develop on
account of wear. Various improvements were made in this machine within
the next few years and two more were built, one in 1854 and one in
1859, essentially like it. These three machines are in use today and
doing work which meets modern requirements of accuracy.

[Illustration: FIGURE 42. JOSEPH R. BROWN]

Soon after the first graduating machine was put into use, the vernier
caliper, reading to thousandths of an inch, was brought out by Mr.
Brown; the first was made as early as 1851. In the following year
he applied the vernier to protractors. A writer, in speaking of the
invention of the vernier caliper, says, “It was the first practical
tool for exact measurements which could be sold in any country at a
price within the reach of the ordinary machinist, and its importance in
the attainment of accuracy for fine work can hardly be overestimated.”
The introduction of the vernier caliper was slow, only four being made
in the first year. In 1852 Mr. Brown asked the New York agents to
return one which they had on exhibition because he needed it for some
fine work and did not have another in the shop. Within a year or two
the sales improved, for Mr. Sharpe wrote his agent at Newark, N. J., in
1854, that it could not be expected there would be a market for many
more tools in that neighborhood, as $500 worth had already been sold
there.

Mr. Brown did not have the market long, for in 1852 Samuel Darling also
invented and built a graduating engine and began the manufacture of
rules and squares at Bangor, Maine. Mr. Darling had been a farmer and
sawmill owner, with a strong bent for mechanics. He had gone to work
in a machine shop six years before and almost from the first had given
his attention to improvements in machinists’ tools. His first partner
was Edward H. Bailey, but after a year a new partnership was formed
with Michael Schwartz, a saw maker and hardware dealer of Bangor.
They soon became active competitors of J. R. Brown & Sharpe, and to
this day mechanics here and there have scales marked “D. & S., Bangor,
Me.” Competition between the two firms, both in prices and quality of
work, became so keen that a truce was called in 1866, resulting in
the formation of the partnership of Darling, Brown & Sharpe, which
conducted this part of the business until 1892, when Darling’s interest
was bought out. The entire business was soon after conducted under the
name The Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, the original firm of J.
R. Brown & Sharpe having been incorporated under that name in 1868.

In the spring of 1868 Mr. Darling moved to Providence, bringing with
him his graduating engine, machinery and six of his most experienced
workmen. Darling’s engine was built along radically different lines
from Brown’s, an interesting feature being that many of its parts were
made of saw-stock, which he also used as the material for his scales
and squares. His machines and processes had been kept secret, and it
was not until after the partnership was formed that Mr. Brown had
opportunity of seeing them at Bangor. Mr. Darling’s original dividing
machine is also still running at the Brown & Sharpe works, having been
operated for over fifty years by John E. Hall, who remembers the time
when Mr. Darling first brought his new partners to see it.

Both J. R. Brown & Sharpe and Mr. Darling had had their standards
compared with those at Washington prior to the formation of the
partnership. Standards of a still higher degree of accuracy were
prepared about 1877, and the following is quoted from a letter to J. E.
Hilgard, of the Coast Survey Office, Washington, regarding the metric
standard in use by the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company at that
time:

  Taking 39.370 as the standard, there is only 0.00023 in. in the meter
  difference in our comparison, which perhaps is as close as may be
  expected. We shall now consider your comparison of our steel bar with
  the standard at Washington as correct, and in our comparisons with it
  shall be able to detect errors as small as 0.000025 in.

Still later and more accurate standards were made by Oscar J. Beale in
1893.[191]

  [191] _American Machinist_, Vol. XXXVI, p. 1025.

The early business of J. R. Brown & Sharpe connected them closely with
the various standards then in use for measuring wire, sheet metal, and
the like. Mr. Sharpe was impressed with the irregularity and confusion
of these various gauges, so that after he became Mr. Brown’s partner,
he interested himself in the establishment of a more systematic
standard for wire gauges. In 1855 he corresponded with various people
in regard to gauges for clock springs. By January of 1856 the wire
gauge with a regular progression of sizes had been conceived, and a
month later a table of sizes was made. The new system was laid before
the Waterbury Brass Association by Mr. Sharpe, and in November of
that year fifty gauges were sent to William Brown, president of the
Association, for inspection by the members to show them the uniformity
in size which could be maintained in making a number of gauges.

The Association passed resolutions adopting this standard, and in
February, 1857, eight of the leading American manufacturers signed
these resolutions. The new gauge, introduced to the public through a
circular sent out in March of that year, became the standard, since
known as the American Wire Gauge.

The subject of accurate gearing came up in connection with the clock
business then conducted by J. R. Brown & Sharpe. There were also calls
for gears to be cut which were beyond the capacity of the machine
they then had for such work. This led to the design and building of a
precision gear cutter, not only to produce accurate gears, but also to
drill index plates and do circular graduating.

The second of the linear dividing engines, built in 1854, had a
graduated silver ring set into the dividing wheel. This ring was
graduated at the office of the Coast Survey in Washington by William