Although the commercial manufacture of machinery began in New England, Philadelphia became, and for a long time remained, the largest tool building center in the country. Its large population and nearness to coal, iron and tide water, made this almost inevitable, but it was hastened by the work of two brilliant mechanics, William Sellers and William Bement.

Bishop, in his “History of American Manufactures,”[200] says: “In the invention and construction of machinery and instruments for practical and scientific purposes, Philadelphia mechanics early acquired a reputation for skill. The records of original American invention contain few names more distinguished than those of Godfrey, the inventor of the quadrant, of Rittenhouse, who made the first telescope constructed in America, and whose orrery and other scientific instruments displayed unusual mechanical and mathematical genius; of Franklin, Evans, Fulton, Fitch, and others whose inventive and constructive skill have added to the permanent wealth of the State and the Union.” Of these, Oliver Evans seems to have affected modern manufacturing methods the most.

Evans was born in Delaware in 1755. He was apprenticed to a wheelwright, and invented a card machine as early as 1777, but never followed it up. In 1785 he built a flour mill in Newcastle County, Del.; and, impatient at the crude methods in use, he began a series of improvements which form the basis of the modern art of handling materials. It has been claimed that Evans stole many of these ideas from the Ellicotts in Maryland. This does not seem probable. Thomas Ellicott wrote a portion of the “Millwright and Millers Guide” which Evans published to help introduce his machinery, and in this Ellicott himself refers to “the elevators, hopper-boys, etc., invented by Oliver Evans, late of Delaware, though now of Philadelphia.” Evans developed a number of closely related transporting devices about which no question is raised and no claims on behalf of the Ellicotts made; and many years later, in 1812, Evans sued those Ellicotts who were then operating for infringement of his patents and obtained judgment. If they could have proved priority it seems natural that they would have done so.

Evans’ improvements related chiefly to the movement of materials during the processes of manufacture. He modified the ancient Egyptian chain of pots, used for irrigation, by using an endless belt carrying iron buckets so arranged as to fill with dry material from a boot at the bottom and to empty by gravity into a hopper as they went over the head pulley. He used a belt conveyor for horizontal movement, without however the troughing feature which is a later improvement. When the discharge end was lowest, Evans utilized gravity to drive it, and called it a “descender.” What Evans called a “drill” was an “elevator laid horizontally” and provided with wooden cleats which scraped the grain along the bottom of the box in which it ran, and was nothing more nor less than our modern flight or scraper conveyor. Evans’ “conveyor” was a round, wooden shaft on which he nailed a sheet-iron spiral which pushed the grain along a trough in which the shaft rotated; and when he wished to stir or dry the material as he moved it, he broke up the continuous helix into a number of separate arms arranged spirally. These of course correspond to the modern screw conveyor. His so-called “hopper-boy” consisted of a vertical shaft with a horizontal cross bar at its lower end provided on its lower side with flights which spread the meal for drying, and slowly worked it in a spiral toward a hopper at the center. The angle of the flights was adjustable so that the time allowed for cooling could be varied. He also used pivoted wooden spouts at the discharge of the elevators to deliver the grain into different bins. These improvements are said to have effected a saving of over $30,000 a year in the Ellicott Mill at Patapsco, Md., on an output of 325 barrels a day.[201] In his patents and various books Evans shows nearly all of the modern transporting devices in substantially their present forms.[202]

Evans moved to Philadelphia some time prior to 1790. In 1800 he had a mill near Third and Market Streets and the next year was selling mill supplies at Ninth and Market Streets. As a boy he had become interested in the steam engine. A description of the Newcomen engine fell into his hands and he was struck with the fact that the steam was used only to produce a vacuum and saw that more power could be obtained if it were used to produce pressure. After his removal to Philadelphia he made an engine 6 inches diameter by 18 inches stroke, which was running in 1802, grinding plaster of Paris and sawing wood. It cost, boiler and all, more than $3700 and nearly impoverished him. Its successful operation, however, led to an order for an engine to drive a steamboat on the Mississippi, which was sent to New Orleans but never used for its original purpose. The boat it was intended for had been stranded high and dry during a flood, so the engine was set to running a saw mill and later a cotton press. In 1803 Evans began business as a regular engine builder and was unquestionably the first one in the United States. He advocated long stroke engines operating under high steam pressure, of which he had built fifty by 1816. In 1804 he built a flat bottomed boat, fitted with a steam driven, chain bucket dredge, which he called the “Oruktor Amphibolos” or in good English the Amphibious Digger. It was built more than a mile from the river, and was mounted on rollers connected with the engine. After moving around what is now the City Hall Square each day for several days, the boat walked out Market Street to the Schuykill and into the water; its rollers were disconnected, a stern paddle wheel substituted, and it steamed down the Schuykill and around up the Delaware to the city.

In 1805 he advertised a new book, “The Young Engineer’s Guide,” which he intended to be very complete and “abstruse.” Disappointed in his application for the extension of his patents and crippled by his first engine ventures, he issued it much abridged, with only part of the illustrations planned, and called it “The Abortion of the Young Engineer’s Guide.” The proportions given in this book for one of his steam engines were: diameter of cylinder, 20 inches; stroke, 5 feet; steam pressure, 194 to 220 pounds. The boilers were of cast iron, 30 inches in diameter, 24 feet long, fired at one end, with a single return flue. An engine was actually built to these proportions for the Fairmount Water Works. It may be added that the boilers burst on three different occasions.

In 1807 Evans was established as “Millwright and Engineer” at the Mars Works at Ninth and Vine Streets. An old description of the plant says that it consisted of

Incidentally the last sentence is an admirable illustration of the origin of the term “horse power.” This business was carried on until Evans’ death. It would be interesting to know how far he influenced the design of Mississippi river boat engines which have retained the proportions characteristic of the engines which he first built for that service.

Evans’ best-known book, “The Young Millwright and Miller’s Guide,” went through a number of editions and was translated and published abroad. In this he gives his idea of “The True Path to Inventions.” It is well worth quoting, as it explains, in part, his own success as an inventor.

Evans was certainly an independent, and probably the first, inventor of the high pressure steam engine, a type of engine which he saw was well suited to American pioneer conditions. He was interested in steam locomotion, and predicted the development of railways with singular accuracy.

He practically initiated the modern science of handling materials. While many of his theories were faulty, his mechanical practice was seldom wrong. He was a restless man, discontented and inclined to air his grievances in public. Once, in a fit of pique, he destroyed the drawings and records of, it is said, more than eighty inventions—an act which he regretted later. Though frequently disappointed, he was in the end fairly successful, and was unquestionably one of the foremost of the early American mechanics.

In Philadelphia, as in New England, many of the early shops made textile machinery. Arkwright machines were built by James Davenport at the Globe Mills at the north end of Second Street, which Washington visited in 1797 when the new Federal Government inaugurated its policy of developing American industries. Davenport died soon after, the business ceased and the factory was sold in 1798. Cotton machinery is said to have been manufactured also by Eltonhead in 1803.

Philadelphia was then the largest city in the country, with an active industrial life. It was natural, therefore, that the tools and methods developed in and about Pawtucket should, sooner or later, take root there. In 1810 Alfred Jenks, a direct descendant of Joseph Jenks, of Lynn, having served his time with Samuel Slater in Pawtucket, moved to Holmesburg, Pa., and started the first factory in Pennsylvania for making textile machinery. His business grew rapidly and in 1820 he moved to Bridesburg, now a part of Philadelphia, bringing his shop along with him on rollers. By 1825 there were thirty cotton mills in and about the city, most of which he had equipped. As the demand for woolen machinery arose Jenks met it and he equipped the first woolen mill built in the state. Under his leadership and that of his son, Barton H. Jenks, the shop had a wide influence and was the foremost of the early Philadelphia plants building textile machinery. Other early shops in this field were those of J. & T. Wood, Hindle & Sons, James Smith & Company, W. P. Uhlinger & Company.[206]

The two plants which gave Philadelphia its great reputation for tool building were those established by Sellers and Bement. Probably no one has had a greater influence on machine tools in America than William Sellers. He has been called the Whitworth of America, and there is a singular parallelism in the work and influence of the two men. Sellers was born in Pennsylvania in 1824, was educated in a private school maintained by his father, and later apprenticed to his uncle, John M. Poole, at Wilmington, Del.[207] When only twenty-one he took charge of the machine shop of Fairbanks, Bancroft & Company in Providence, R. I. Three years later he began the manufacture of machine tools and mill gearing at Thirtieth and Chestnut Streets, Philadelphia, and was soon after joined by Edward Bancroft, who moved from Providence, the firm becoming Bancroft & Sellers. John Sellers, Jr., a brother of William, became a partner and in 1853 they moved to Sixteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Mr. Bancroft died in 1855 and the firm became William Sellers & Company, which was incorporated in 1886, with William Sellers as president.

Bancroft was the inventive member of the firm and Mr. Sellers the executive. Sellers’ designing ability did not develop until after Bancroft’s death. His first patent was granted in 1857. In all he was granted over ninety United States patents and many others in foreign countries, covering a wide variety of subjects; machine tools of all kinds, injectors which he introduced into the United States, rifling machines, riveters, boilers, hydraulic machinery, hoisting cranes, steam hammers and engines, ordnance, turntables, etc. One of the best known and most original of Sellers’ machines was the spiral geared planer patented in 1862, which has always been associated with his name.

Almost from the first Sellers cut loose from the accepted designs of the day. He was among the first to realize that red paint, beads and mouldings, and architectural embellishments were false in machine design. He introduced the “machine gray” paint which has become universal; made the form of the machine follow the function to be performed and freed it from all pockets and beading. Like Bement he realized that American tools then being built were too light; and they both put more metal into their machines than was the practice elsewhere. From the first he adopted standards and adhered to them so closely that repair parts can be supplied today for machines made fifty years ago.

In April, 1864, Sellers, as president of the Franklin Institute, read a paper on “A System of Screw Threads and Nuts,” in which he proposed the system of screw threads since variously known as the Sellers, Franklin Institute, or U. S. Standard.[208] They embodied the sixty degree angle and a flat of one-eighth of the pitch at the top and bottom of the thread. In this paper Sellers stated clearly the need for some generally accepted standard, reviewed the various threads then used, particularly the Whitworth thread, with its fifty-five degree angle and rounded corners, which he disapproved of on three grounds; first, that it was difficult to secure a fit at the top and bottom; second, that the angle was difficult to verify; and third, the high cost of making cutting tools which would conform accurately to the standard. He proposed the sixty degree angle as easier to make and already in general use in this country, and the flat top as easy to generate and to verify. He went a step further, and proposed at the same time a standard for bolt-heads and nuts, in which the dimensions were derived from a simple formula and the distance across flats was the same for square and hexagon nuts, so that the same wrench would do for either style of nut.

This paper had as great influence in America as Whitworth’s paper of 1841 had in England. A committee was appointed to investigate the question and recommend a standard. On this committee, among others, were William B. Bement, C. T. Parry of the Baldwin Locomotive Works, S. V. Merrick, J. H. Towne, and Coleman Sellers. Early in the next year the committee reported in favor of the Sellers standard, the Franklin Institute communicated their findings to other societies, and recommended the general adoption of the system throughout the country. The Sellers’ thread was adopted by the United States Government for all government work in 1868, by the Pennsylvania Railroad in 1869, the Master Car Builders’ Association in 1872, and soon became practically universal. After exhaustive investigation the Sellers’ form of thread was adopted in 1898 by the International Congress for the standardization of screw threads, at Zurich, and is now in general use on the continent of Europe.[209]

In 1868 William Sellers organized the Edgemoor Iron Company which furnished the iron work for the principal Centennial buildings and all the structural work of the Brooklyn Bridge. In the development of this business, he led the way in the distinctly American methods and machinery by which the building of bridges has been, to a great extent, put upon a manufacturing basis. This involved the design and introduction of hydraulic machinery, large multiple punches, riveters, cranes, boring machines, etc.

The excellence of his machinery soon brought him into contact with government engineers and throughout his life his influence in the War and Navy Departments was great. In 1890 the Navy Department called for bids on an eight-foot lathe, with a total length of over 128 feet, to bore and turn sixteen-inch cannon for the Naval Gun Factory at Washington. Sellers disapproved of the design and refused to bid on it. He proposed an alternative one of his own, argued its merits in person before the Board of Engineers, and secured its adoption and a contract for it. This great lathe, weighing over 500,000 pounds, has attracted the attention of engineers from all parts of the world. In 1873 Mr. Sellers reorganized the William Butcher Steel Works as the Midvale Steel Company and became its president. Under his management the company grew rapidly, and later became a leader in production of heavy ordnance.

It was here that Frederick W. Taylor began in 1880 his work on the art of cutting metals, which resulted in modern high-speed tool steels and a general re-design of machine tools. These experiments, covering a period of twenty-six years, cost upwards of $200,000. Mr. Taylor has frequently acknowledged his indebtedness in this work to the patience and courage of Mr. Sellers, who was then an old man and might have been expected to oppose radical change. It was he who made the work possible, however, and he supported Taylor unwaveringly in the face of constant protests.[210] Mr. Sellers was a man of commanding presence, direct but gracious in manner, who won and held the respect and loyalty of all about him. His judgment was almost unerring and he dominated each of the great establishments he built up.

The firm of William Sellers & Company had another master mind in that of Dr. Coleman Sellers, a second cousin of William Sellers.[211] He was born in Philadelphia in 1827, his father, Coleman Sellers, being also an inventor and mechanic. Like Nasmyth he spent his school holidays in his father’s shop, which was at Cardington. In 1846, when he was nineteen years old, he went to Cincinnati and worked in the Globe Rolling Mill, operated by his elder brothers, where the first locomotives for the Panama Railroad were built; and in two years he became superintendent. In 1851 he became foreman of the works of James and Jonathan Niles, who were then in Cincinnati and building locomotives. Six years later he returned to Philadelphia, became chief engineer of William Sellers & Company, and remained with them for over thirty years, becoming a partner in 1873. During these years he designed a wide range of machinery, which naturally covered much the same field as that of William Sellers, but his familiarity with locomotive work especially fitted him for the design of railway tools. His designs were original, correct and refined. The Sellers coupling was his invention and he did much to introduce the modern systems of power transmission.

Doctor Sellers was a good physicist, an expert photographer, telegrapher, microscopist, and a professor in the Franklin Institute, his lectures always drawing large audiences. Like William Sellers, he was a member of most of the great engineering and scientific societies, here and abroad; and he was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, of which he was a charter member. He was received with the greatest distinction in his visits to Europe. In 1886 impaired health compelled his relinquishing regular work and he resigned his position of engineer for William Sellers & Company, being succeeded by his son, the present president of the company. His last great work was in connection with the power development of Niagara Falls. He was engineer for the Cataract Construction Company and served on the commission which determined the types of turbines and generators and the methods of power transmission finally adopted. Among the others on this commission were Lord Kelvin, Colonel Turretini, the great Swiss engineer, and Professor Unwin, and its report forms the foundation of modern large hydro-electric work. William Sellers & Company has a unique distinction among the builders of machine tools in having had the leadership of two such men as William and Coleman Sellers.

William B. Bement, the son of a Connecticut farmer and blacksmith, was born at Bradford, N. H., in 1817. His education was obtained in the district schools and in his father’s blacksmith shop. His mechanical aptitude was so clear that he was apprenticed to Moore & Colby, manufacturers of woolen and cotton machinery at Peterboro, N. H. His progress at first was rapid. Within two years he became foreman, and on the withdrawal of one of the partners, was admitted into the firm. He continued there three years, already giving much thought to machine tools, for which he saw the rising need. In 1840 he went to Manchester and entered the Amoskeag shop when it was just finished, remaining there two years as a foreman and contractor under William A. Burke, to whom we have referred elsewhere. From there Bement went to take charge of a shop for manufacturing woolen machinery at Mishawaka, Ind. Unfortunately it was burned to the ground while Bement had gone back to New Hampshire for his family, so that when he returned with them he found himself without employment and with only ten dollars in hand. For the time being he worked as a blacksmith and gunsmith, and made an engine lathe for himself in the shop of the St. Joseph Iron Company, which gave him permission to use their tools in return for the use of his patterns to make a similar machine for themselves. Much of the work in making this lathe was done by hand as there was no planer within many hundred miles. The St. Joseph Iron Company, seeing his work, offered him the charge of their shop, to which he agreed, provided the plant were enlarged and equipped with proper tools. This was done, but just as everything was completed this plant also was burned down. Bement had plans for another shop ready the following day, went into the woods with others, cut the necessary timber, and a new shop was soon completed. He remained there for three years, constructing a variety of machine tools, one of which was a gear cutter said to have been the first one built in the West, or used beyond Cleveland.

He returned to New England as a contractor in the Lowell Machine Shop under Burke, who had gone there from the Amoskeag Mills in 1845. On account of Bement’s resourcefulness and skill in designing, Burke induced him to relinquish his contracts and take charge of their designing, which he did for three years, his residence at Lowell covering in all about six years.

In 1851 Elijah D. Marshall, who had established a business of engraving rolls for printing calicos in 1848 and had a small shop at Twentieth and Callowhill Streets in Philadelphia, offered Bement a partnership. He moved to Philadelphia in September of that year, and with Marshall and Gilbert A. Colby, a nephew, he began the manufacture of machine tools under the name of Marshall, Bement & Colby, thus starting only a year or so after Sellers. Marshall was a large man, dignified and deliberate in speech. Bement was strong, vigorous, a born designer, a remarkably rapid draftsman, and had a capacity for work rarely equalled. Colby was also a man of considerable mechanical ability, with advanced business ideas. Their shop consisted of a single three-storied, stone, whitewashed building, 40 by 90 feet. Their entire machine shop was on the first floor, with a 10- by 12-foot room for an office. The engine, boiler and blacksmith shop were in small outbuildings. Part of the second floor was rented to another factory and the rest was sometimes used for religious meetings, while the third floor was used for engraving printing rolls. Their tools were few and crude; among them were a 36-inch lathe with a wooden bed and iron straps for ways, and a 48-inch by 14-foot planer with ornate Doric uprights. Marshall and Colby soon retired, the latter going to Niles, Mich., where he was very successful. James Dougherty, an expert foundryman, and George C. Thomas entered the firm, which became Bement & Dougherty, the plant being known as the “Industrial Works.” Mr. Thomas contributed considerable capital, and a new shop and a foundry were built. At the same time they installed a planer 10 feet wide by 8 feet high, to plane work 45 feet long, a notable tool for that day.

After a few years of struggle, the plant began to grow rapidly and at one time was the largest of its kind in the country. Bement and Sellers were among the first to concentrate wholly on tool building. They confined themselves to work of the highest quality. Both made much heavier tools, as we have said, than the New England builders, their only competitors, and in a short time had established great reputations. Bement relied little on patent protection, trusting to quality and constant improvement. Thomas retired from the partnership in 1856 and Dougherty in 1870; and Clarence S. Bement joined the firm, which became William B. Bement & Son. John M. Shrigley became a partner in 1875, William P. Bement in 1879, and Frank Bement in 1888.

Frederick B. Miles was an employee of Bement & Dougherty who established a tool business under the name of Ferris & Miles, which afterward became the Machine Tool Works. While head of these works, Miles greatly improved the steam hammer, particularly its valve mechanism, and many details of what is known as the Bement hammer were invented by Miles. In 1885 the Machine Tool Works consolidated with William Bement & Son, forming Bement, Miles & Company. Mr. Miles was an accomplished engineer and designer, with the unusual equipment of six languages at his command, an asset of value in the firm’s foreign business. William Bement, Senior, died in 1897, and in 1900 the business became a part of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company. Mr. Miles retired at that time and has not since been active in the tool business.[212]

Although Bement and Sellers contributed more to the art of tool building than any of the other Philadelphia mechanics, some of these others ought to be mentioned. Matthias W. Baldwin, a native of New Jersey, began as a jeweler’s apprentice. In partnership with David H. Mason he began making bookbinders’ tools, to which he added in 1822 the engraving of rolls for printing cotton goods and later of bank notes. From the invention and manufacture of a variety of tools used in that business they were led gradually into the machine tool business, the building of hydraulic presses, calender rolls, steam engines, and finally locomotives. In 1830 Baldwin built a model locomotive for the Peale Museum which led to an order from the Philadelphia & Germantown Railroad for an engine which was completed in 1832 and placed on the road in January, 1833. An advertisement of that time says: “The locomotive engine built by Mr. M. W. Baldwin of this city will depart daily, when the weather is fair, with a train of passenger cars. On rainy days horses will be attached in the place of the locomotive.”

From this beginning has sprung the Baldwin Locomotive Works, which employs approximately 20,000 men. In 1834 they built five locomotives; in 1835, fourteen; in 1836, forty. Their one thousandth locomotive was built in 1861; the five thousandth in 1880 and the forty thousandth in 1913. These works have naturally greatly influenced the neighboring tool makers. From the beginning, both Bement and Sellers specialized on railway machinery and they have always built a class of tools larger than those manufactured in New England.

The Southwark Foundry was established in 1836, first as a foundry only, but a large machine shop was soon added. The owners were S. V. Merrick, who became the first president of the Pennsylvania Railroad Company, and John Henry Towne, who was the engineering partner. The firm designed and built steam engines and other heavy machinery and introduced the steam hammer into the United States under arrangement with James Nasmyth. From the designs of Capt. John Ericsson they built the engines for the “Princeton,” the first American man-of-war propelled by a screw, and later were identified with the Porter-Allen steam engine. Mr. Towne withdrew from the firm about 1848, and the firm name became successively Merrick & Son, Merrick & Sons, Henry G. Morris, and finally the Southwark Foundry & Machine Company.

I. P. Morris & Company came from Levi Morris & Company, founded in 1828, and for many years were engaged in a similar work. In 1862 Mr. J. H. Towne, above referred to, was admitted to the firm as the engineering partner, and the firm name then became I. P. Morris, Towne & Company, until about 1869 when Mr. Towne withdrew. At his withdrawal the firm name was restored to its original form, I. P. Morris & Company. It is now a department of the Cramp Ship Building Company. During the Civil War the works were occupied largely in building engines and boilers for government vessels, and blast furnace and sugar mill machinery. During this period Henry R. Towne, son of J. H. Towne, entered the works as an apprentice, served in the drawing room and shops, and finally was placed in charge of the erection at the navy yards of Boston and Kittery of the engines, boilers, etc., built for two of the double-turreted monitors. Returning to Philadelphia, he was made assistant superintendent of the works.

J. H. Towne was a mechanical engineer of eminence in his day, whose work as a designer showed unusual thoroughness and finish. He was a warm friend and admirer of both William and Coleman Sellers, and through his influence, Henry R. Towne was at one time a student apprentice in the shops of William Sellers & Company, acquiring there an experience which had a marked influence on his future work. Both of the firms with which J. H. Towne was connected built machine tools for themselves and for others, especially of the heavier and larger kinds, and thus were among the early tool builders. I. P. Morris & Company, about 1860, designed and built for their own use what was then the largest vertical boring mill in this country.[213]

It may surprise some to learn that the well-known New England firm, the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company in Stamford, Conn., is a descendant of these Philadelphia companies. It was organized in October, 1868, by Linus Yale, Jr., and Henry R. Towne, who were brought together by William Sellers. Mr. Yale died in the following December. This company, under the direction and control of Mr. Towne, has had a wide influence on the lock and hardware industry in this country. While the products of the Yale & Towne Manufacturing Company have always consisted chiefly of locks and related articles, they have added since 1876 the manufacture of chain blocks, electric hoists, and, during a considerable period, two lines allied to tool building, namely, cranes and testing machines. This company was the pioneer crane builder of this country, organizing a department for this purpose as early as 1878, and developing a large business in this field, which was sold in 1894 to the Brown Hoisting Machine Company of Cleveland, Ohio. The building of testing machines was undertaken in 1882, to utilize the inventions of Mr. A. H. Emery, and was continued until 1887, when this business was sold to William Sellers & Company, for the same reason that the crane business was sold; namely, that both were incongruous with the other and principal products of the company.

In recent years the Bilgram Machine Works, under the leadership of Hugo Bilgram, an expert Philadelphia mechanic, has made valuable contributions to the art of accurate gear cutting.

In the cities between New York and Philadelphia, and here and there in the smaller towns of Pennsylvania, are several tool builders of influence. Gould & Eberhardt in Newark is one of the oldest firms in the business, having been established in 1833. Ezra Gould, its founder, learned his trade at Paterson, and started in for himself at Newark in a single room, 16 feet square. Within a few years the Gould Machine Company was organized, the business moved to its present location, and a line of lathes, planers and drill presses was manufactured. To these they added fire engines. Ulrich Eberhardt started as an apprentice in 1858 and became a partner in 1877, the firm name becoming E. Gould & Eberhardt, and later Gould & Eberhardt. Mr. Gould retired in 1891, and died in 1901. Mr. Eberhardt also died in 1901; the business has since been incorporated and is now under the management of his three sons. They employ about 400 men in the manufacture of gear and rack cutting machinery and shapers.

The Pond Machine Tool Company, which moved from Worcester to Plainfield, N. J., in 1888, was founded by Lucius W. Pond.[214] It is a large and influential shop and one of the four plants of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company. Their output is chiefly planers, boring mills and large lathes.

The Landis Tool Company, of Waynesboro, Pa., builders of grinding machinery, springs from the firm of Landis Brothers, established in 1890 by F. F. and A. B. Landis. One was superintendent and the other a tool maker in a small plant building portable engines and agricultural machinery. A small Brown & Sharpe grinding machine was purchased for use in these works. Mr. A. B. Landis became interested in the design of a machine more suited to their particular work, and from this has developed the Landis grinder.