• initially machines were made by the factory mechanic, but by 1810 large factories started selling machines to smaller factories
• the Lowell Machine Shop diversified from making textile machinery into making and selling steam engines, power transmission machinery, machine tools (machines that shape metal) and railway locomotives
• By 1830 machine shops had boomed--Worcester (a small city in central Mass.) had 9 machine shops, which shipped their products by canal down to factories in Rhode Island
• there still weren't any engineering schools, to become a mechanical engineer you worked your way up in one of these shops
• the early shops mostly built custom machines and had close relationships with their customers, so they were willing to share new ideas with each other (because they weren't competing directly for the same customers)
• machine shops developed new technology and spread new ideas from one industry to another

  1840 Springfield Armory Flintlock

Technological innovation in machinery moved in the early 19th century from textile machines to machines for gunmaking

• In 1800 guns were made by skilled craftsmen who hand-shaped each part
• Eli Whitney (inventor of the cotton gin) proposed in 1798 to use machines to make identical gun parts, but he couldn't get his idea to work
• the army got interested in the idea of guns with interchangeable parts (very useful for battlefield repair) and asked the government armories to develop such guns
• John Hall made the first guns (a breechloading rifle) with interchangeable parts in 1826 at Harpers Ferry Armory , but only that one design.  Key innovation: all-metal machine tools with automatic stop mechanisms
• Springfield Armory worked step by step towards interchangeable parts under the leadership of Roswell Lee, who saw mechanization as the key and pursued it in all areas
• first woodworking was automated, most significantly with Thomas Blanchard's invention of a stocking lathe that could automatically cut the irregular shape of a gunstock from a pattern
• interchangeable parts were achieved in 1840, lost in 1842 when a new gun model required higher precision, and regained in 1849

  1842 Musket made at Harpers Ferry

This became recognized as the American System of Manufacture

• at the 1851 Crystal Palace Exposition in England people were very impressed by a display of U.S. guns with interchangeable parts
• 1853-4 the British sent a commission to investigate what they called the "American System"--they bought $105,000 worth of U.S. machine tools
• American system involves: division of labor, mechanization, precision, standardization, and interchangeability

• Eli Whitney invented the milling machine in 1818 as a substitute for hand filing and it first saw large-scale use at Harpers Ferry Armory, Lincoln Miller developed in the 1850s, univeral milling machine in 1862
• turret lathe held a cluster of tools to perform a sequence of operations, Robbins and Lawrence started selling them in 1854, Christopher Spencer (inventor of the repeating rifle, invented the automatic turret lathe to make sewing machine spools
• Brown and Sharpe was founded in 1833 to make clocks and watches, introduced a precision gear cutting machine in 1855

PEM photo: milling machine American Precision Museum

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 1883 Singer Sewing Machine

• sewing machine 1846 (initially hand-crafted)
• Singer was successful because of promotion--advertising, demonstrations at fairs, using trained women to teach potential constomers how to use the machine, emphasis on American values of self-made man, democracy, and family.  Singer was not interested in copying armory practice and was slow to adopt interchangeable parts (not until 1880s when forced by need to increase production)--because armory practice produced less exact fits than traditional, European-style hand craftmanship.  He compensated by advertising the precision of his machines
• Wheeler and Wilson Co. had largest share of market until 1867.  Wheeler started in the business of making buckles and buttons.  Combined with inventor Wilson to start making sewing machines in the early 1850s.  In 1855 hired a factory superintendant, William H. Perry, who had worked as an inside contractor at Colt's armory.  Apparently Wheeler anticipated rapid growth of the industry and saw armory practice as the way to meet the challenge.  In 1857 the company started to use special purpose machine tools to shape parts.  By 1862 they could produce almost 30,000 machines annually, claiming no hand shaped parts (although an illustration shows files in use in the assembly room)
• Willcox & Gibbs Sewing machine made by American system from the very beginning.  Investor Willcox selected Brown & Sharpe to make the machine.  Brown & Sharpe saw this as an opportunity to diversity their business and adopt the American system--started by building tools, not sample machines.  The end result of this was a fairly unpopular sewing machine and a key machine tools business.
  Remington Ad

• typewriter 1867
• cash register 1884
• professional and scientific instruments
• agricultural implements (next class)
• bicycles