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]

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.