Prior to 1880 practically all of the tool building in the United States was done east of the Alleghenies. The few tools built here and there in Ohio and Indiana were mostly copies of eastern ones and their quality was not high. In fact, there were few shops in the West equipped to do accurate work. “Chordal’s Letters,” published first in the American Machinist and later in book form,[215] give an excellent picture of the western machine shop in the transition stage from pioneer conditions to those of the present day.

Good tool building appeared in Ohio in the early eighties, and within ten years its competition was felt by the eastern tool builders. The first western centers were Cleveland, Cincinnati and Hamilton. Of these, Cleveland seems to have been the first to build tools of the highest grade.

We have already noted that the Pratt & Whitney shop in Hartford furnished Cleveland with a number of its foremost tool builders. The oldest of these and perhaps the best known is the Warner & Swasey Company. This company has the distinction, shared with only one other, of having furnished two presidents of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. Oddly enough the other company is also a Cleveland firm, the Wellman, Seaver, Morgan Company, builders of coal- and ore-handling machinery, and of steel mill equipment.

Worcester E. Warner, of the Warner & Swasey Company, was born at Cummington, Mass., in 1846. Although a farmer’s son and denied a college education, he had access in his own home to an admirable library, which he used to great advantage. When nineteen years old he went to Boston and learned mechanical drawing in the office of George B. Brayton. Shortly afterwards he was transferred to the shop at Exeter, N. H., where he first met Ambrose Swasey. Mr. Swasey was born at Exeter, also in 1846, went to the traditional “little red schoolhouse,” and learned his trade as a machinist in the shop to which Warner came. In 1870 they went together to Hartford, entered the Pratt & Whitney shop as journeymen mechanics, and in a short time had become foremen and contractors. Mr. Swasey soon gained a reputation for accurate workmanship and rare ability in the solution of complex mechanical problems. He had charge of the gear department, and invented and developed a new process of generating spur gear teeth, which was given in a paper before the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.[216] Mr. Warner, also, became one of the company’s most trusted mechanics, was head of the planing department, and had charge of the Pratt & Whitney exhibit at the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia.

In 1881 they left Hartford and went first to Chicago, intending to build engine lathes, each putting $5000 into the venture; but finding difficulty in obtaining good workmen there, they moved in about a year to Cleveland, where they have remained. Their first order was for twelve turret lathes, and they have built this type of machine ever since. At various times they have built speed lathes, die-sinking machines, horizontal boring mills, and hand gear-cutters, but they now confine their tool building to hand-operated turret lathes. They have never built automatics.

The building of astronomical instruments was not in their original scheme, but Mr. Warner’s taste for astronomy and Mr. Swasey’s skill in intricate and delicate mechanical problems, led them to take up this work. These instruments, usually designed by astronomers and instrument makers, were in general much too light; at least the large ones were. From their long experience as tool builders, Warner and Swasey realized that strength and rigidity are quite as essential as accuracy of workmanship where great precision is required. The design of a large telescope carrying a lens weighing over 500 pounds at the end of a steel tube forty or sixty feet long, and weighing five or six tons, which must be practically free from flexure and vibration and under intricate and accurate control, becomes distinctly an engineering problem. To this problem both Mr. Warner and Mr. Swasey brought engineering skill and experience of the highest order.

When the trustees of the Lick Observatory called in 1886 for designs for the great 36-inch telescope, Warner & Swasey submitted one which provided for much heavier mountings than had ever been used before, and heavier construction throughout. They were awarded the contract and the instrument was built and installed under Mr. Swasey’s personal supervision. It is located on the very top of Mount Hamilton in California, 4200 feet above sea-level; and to give room for the observatory 42,000 tons of rock had to be removed. The great instrument, weighing with its mountings more than forty tons, “was transported in sections, over a newly made mountain road, sometimes in a driving snowstorm, with the wind blowing from sixty to eighty miles an hour.”[217]

As is well known, the instrument was a brilliant success. The Warner & Swasey Company has since designed and built the mountings for the United States Naval Observatory telescope, the 40-inch Yerkes telescope, the 72-inch reflecting telescope for the Canadian Government, and the 60-inch reflecting telescope for the National Observatory at Cordoba, Argentina, the largest in use in the southern hemisphere. In addition to this large work, the firm has built meridian circles, transits and other instruments for astronomical work, range finders for the United States Government, and introduced the prismatic binocular into this country.

In connection with this astronomical work Mr. Swasey designed and built a dividing engine capable of dividing circles of 40 inches in diameter with an error of less than one second of arc. A second of arc subtends about one-third of an inch at the distance of one mile. Although the graduations on the inlaid silver band of this machine are so fine that they can scarcely be seen with the naked eye, the width of each line is twelve times the maximum error in the automatic graduations which the machine produces.

Although their reputation as telescope builders is international, Warner & Swasey are, and always have been, primarily tool builders. They were not the first to build tools in the Middle West, but they were the first to turn out work comparable in quality with that of the best shops in the East.

The Warner & Swasey shop has had the advantage of other good mechanics besides its proprietors. Walter Allen, an expert tool designer, did his entire work with them, rising from apprentice to works manager. Frank Kempsmith, originally a Brown & Sharpe man, was at one time their superintendent. Lucas, of the Lucas Machine Tool Company, was a foreman. George Bardons, who served his apprenticeship with Pratt & Whitney, went west with Warner and Swasey when they started in business and was their superintendent; and John Oliver, a graduate of Worcester Polytechnic, was their chief draftsman. The last two left Warner & Swasey in 1891 and established the firm of Bardons & Oliver for building lathes.

Another old Pratt & Whitney workman is A. W. Foote of the Foote-Burt Company, builders of drilling machines. Unlike the others, however, Foote did not work for Warner & Swasey.

The first multi-spindle automatic screw machines were manufactured in Cleveland. The Cleveland automatic was developed in the plant of the White Sewing Machine Company for their own work, and its success led to the establishment of a separate company for its manufacture. The Acme automatic was invented by Reinholdt Hakewessel and E. C. Henn in Hartford. Mr. Hakewessel was a Pratt & Whitney man and Mr. Henn a New Britain boy, who had worked first in Lorain and Cincinnati and then for twelve years in Hartford with Pratt & Cady, the valve manufactures. In 1895 Henn and Hakewessel began manufacturing bicycle parts in a little Hartford attic, developing for this work a five-spindle automatic. Seven years later the business was moved to Cleveland, where it became the National-Acme Manufacturing Company, organized by E. C. and A. W. Henn and W. D. B. Alexander, who came from the Union Steel Screw Works. Their business of manufacturing automatic screw machinery and screw machine products has grown rapidly and is now one of the largest industries in Cleveland.

The White Sewing Machine Company and the Union Steel Screw Works were among the first in Cleveland to use accurate methods and to produce interchangeable work. It was at the Union Steel Screw Works that James Hartness, of the Jones & Lamson Machine Company, got his first training in accurate work. Their shop practice was good and was due to Jason A. Bidwell, who came from the American Tool Company of Providence.

The Standard Tool Company is an offspring of Bingham & Company, Cleveland, and of the Morse Twist Drill Company of New Bedford, Mass. From the Standard Tool Company has come the Whitman-Barnes Company of Akron, and from that the Michigan Twist Drill and Machine Company.

Newton & Cox was established in 1876, and built planers and milling machines. Mr. Newton sold his share in the business to F. F. Prentiss in 1880, went to Philadelphia, and started the Newton Machine Tool Works. Cox & Prentiss later became the Cleveland Twist Drill Company. They drifted into the drill business through not being able to buy such drills as they required. They began making drills first for themselves, then for their friends, and gradually took up their manufacture, giving up the business in machine tools.

Cincinnati is said to have upwards of 15,000 men engaged in the tool building industry, and to be the largest tool building center in the world. There are approximately forty firms there engaged in this work, many of them large and widely known.

This development, which has taken place within the past thirty-five years, may possibly have sprung indirectly from the old river traffic. Seventy years ago this traffic was large, and Cincinnati did the greater part of the engine and boat building and repair work. When the river trade vanished, the mechanics engaged in this work were compelled to turn their attention to something else, and there may be some significance in the coincidence of the rise of tool building with the decline of the older industry.

There had been more or less manufacturing in Cincinnati for many years, but little of it could be described as tool building. Miles Greenwood established the Eagle Iron Works in 1832 on the site now occupied by the Ohio Mechanics Institute. It comprised a general machine shop, an iron foundry, brass foundries, and a hardware factory which rivaled those of New England, employing in all over 500 men. The hardware factory was important enough to attract the special attention of the English commissioners who visited this country in 1853.

In the fifties and early sixties, Niles & Company built steamboat and stationary engines, locomotives and sugar machinery, and employed from 200 to 300 men. This company was the forerunner of the present Niles Tool Works in Hamilton. Lane & Bodley were building woodworking machinery about the same time, and J. A. Fay & Company, another firm building woodworking machinery, which started in Keene, N. H., began work in Cincinnati in the early sixties.

The first builder of metal-working tools in Cincinnati was John Steptoe; in fact, he is said to have been for many years the only tool builder west of the Alleghenies. Steptoe came to this country from Oldham, England, some time in the forties. It is said that he was a foundling and that his name came from his having been left on a doorstep. He was married before he came to Cincinnati, and had served an apprenticeship of seven years, although he was so young in appearance that no one would believe it. After working some time for Greenwood, he started in business for himself, making a foot power mortising machine and later a line of woodworking tools. The first metal-working tool which he built was a copy of the Putnam lathe. With Thomas McFarlan, another Englishman, he formed the firm of Steptoe & McFarlan, and his shop, called the Western Machine Works, employed by 1870 about 300 men. Their old payrolls contain the names of William E. Gang of the William E. Gang Company; Mr. Oesterlien of the Oesterlien Machine Company; and Mr. Dietz of the old Dietz, Schumacher & Boye Company, now the Boye & Emmes Machine Tool Company.

Steptoe was not an originator or an inventor. He was a rough man, plain spoken, honest and well informed. He died in 1888 at about eighty-four years of age. Thomas P. Egan of the J. A. Fay & Egan Company, who had worked for Steptoe and was the administrator of his estate, sold the business for the widow to Otting & Lauder.[218] In compliance with Steptoe’s wish it was stipulated that his name should be retained and it has been perpetuated in the various changes through which the business has gone. Today the John Steptoe Company manufactures shapers and milling machines. Steptoe’s name should be remembered, for Cincinnati tool building owes its start more to him than to anyone else, with the possible exception of William Lodge, who was himself one of Steptoe’s workmen.

Mr. Lodge, the son of George Lodge, a skilled mechanic in the textile industry, was born in Leeds, England, in 1848. After serving his apprenticeship in the shops of Fairbairn & Company, Leeds, he came to Philadelphia, where he worked for Chambers Brothers from 1869 to 1872, making paper-folding machinery. He came to Cincinnati in 1872 and worked for Steptoe for eight years, first as a journeyman machinist and later as a foreman. Having saved $1000, he formed a partnership with William Barker and they started in business the first day of January, 1880, at Fifth Street and the C. H. & D. tracks. Associated with them for a short time was Mr. Bechle, another Steptoe workman. Their first task was to true up a few second-hand machines which they had bought for their shop, after which they went out, secured some business, and came back and executed it themselves, since they had no one in their employ. Part of this first business was making some opening dies for Powell and a small turret lathe for Lunkenheimer. Lunkenheimer immediately ordered three more and during the following year eighteen lathes were made and sold. Beginning with $1000, the business inventoried at the end of the first year $7000; at the end of the second year $32,000; and at the end of ten years $400,000. Fifteen months after starting they employed seventy-five men. There is little doubt that this rapid success induced quite a number of the better and more ambitious mechanics in Cincinnati to take up similar work. Mr. Lodge was well known among the mechanics of the city and had been president of their union. If one of their own number could build up a successful business, why could they not do the same? Some of the best known of the Cincinnati tool building firms were established during the few years after Mr. Lodge’s start.

In 1886 Mr. Barker sold his interest to Charles Davis and began making Fox lathes and monitors independently. Lodge and Davis continued in partnership until 1892, when Mr. Lodge sold his interest to Mr. Thomas P. Egan and the firm became Davis & Egan, and later the American Tool Works. Mr. Lodge, meanwhile, organized the Ohio Machine Tool Company and a year later became associated with Murray Shipley, forming the present Lodge & Shipley Machine Tool Company.

Mr. Lodge’s first export order was received in 1889. Alfred Herbert, who had just started in Coventry, sent an inquiry in regard to drill presses to Cincinnati, which was forwarded to Mr. Lodge in London. Mr. Lodge went down to see him and asked whether the inquiry was for purposes of information or for purchase. Mr. Herbert said that if Lodge had a better machine he would buy. Mr. Lodge asked to see his machine and after a little hesitation he was taken out into the shop. The first machine he saw was a planer. He said that he could save 30 per cent on the work as it was being done, and would sell them a machine which would do it for £100. He was told that the planer they were looking at cost only £65 and replied that that was all it was worth. He spent several hours in the shop, and left the plant not only with an order, but with the check in payment thereof. This was the beginning of a large export business.

While the firm was Lodge & Davis, it built lathes, planers and drill presses. Mr. Lodge wanted to manufacture rather than build, and to specialize upon lathes. Mr. Davis, who was a business man, wanted a complete line of tools, as he saw the opportunities of selling other machines with the lathes. This led to a policy, the effect of which was to build up a number of small tool building enterprises, independent of each other, but not competing. About 1887 Lodge & Davis began concentrating their manufacturing upon engine lathes, and placing orders for other types of tools with mechanics known to them who were just starting up, or with workmen or foremen from their own plant whom they helped to start in business. For instance, to Smith & Mills, who had been foremen with Steptoe and had started making set screws and cap screws, they gave an order for 300 shapers. Another firm, Smith & Silk, also built shapers for Lodge & Davis. Later they added planers, and in the early nineties they moved to Kenton, Ohio, and began building shapers and planers for their own account. To R. K. LeBlond, who had served his apprenticeship with Brown & Sharpe and had come to Cincinnati to make printers’ machinery and supplies, Lodge & Davis gave a large order for slide-rests. To William Owen, one of their workmen, they gave an order for Fox monitors. Owen went into partnership with Philip Montanus and started the Springfield Machine Tool Company, and Lodge & Shipley bought their entire product for eight years. Through Mr. Lodge’s influence, Frank Kempsmith came from Warner & Swasey as one of the partners in this firm. He afterwards moved to Milwaukee and started the Kempsmith Manufacturing Company. This policy on the part of Lodge & Davis unquestionably set upon their feet a number of small companies which have since grown into successful, independent enterprises.

William E. Gang worked for Lodge as vice-foreman. Greaves was his planer foreman; Henry Dreses was his chief draftsman; and William Herman, of the Fosdick Machine Tool Company, was his superintendent. Gang & Dietz, and Fosdick & Plucker also began by doing work for Lodge & Davis. Through various changes the former has become the present Boye & Emmes Machine Tool Company and the latter the Fosdick Machine Tool Company. Dreses, with Oscar Mueller, started Dreses, Mueller & Company in 1896. In 1902 they separated and each formed a company of his own. Greaves, with H. Klussman, began building woodworking machinery about 1890, to which they have since added the building of engine lathes. The Cincinnati Planer Company is another offshoot of Lodge & Davis and Davis & Egan through B. Quillen and W. Burtner, who were in their office.

It is impossible here to give the history of all the Cincinnati tool builders and only a few can be mentioned. Henry Bickford, a native of New Hampshire and an employee of J. A. Fay & Company, started a few years before Mr. Lodge. In 1874 he began building five sizes of upright drills, from 20 to 38 inches in capacity. While his growth was not so rapid as Mr. Lodge’s, it was steady and by 1885 he had built 3000 machines. The first machines were cheap and built for competition, but from them has developed a product of the highest quality. The Bickford Drill Company was organized in 1887 and the business was extended to include radial and universal drills. The company was reorganized in 1893, and in 1894 it absorbed the Universal Radial Drill Company, its only competitor in this special field in the city. Some years ago the name was changed to the Cincinnati Bickford Tool Company. Mr. Anton Mill and Mr. Henry M. Norris have in the main been responsible for their engineering practice. Mr. Mill was a German who came to them from the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company and Mr. Norris is a Cornell graduate with a wide experience in the eastern tool building shops.

The Cincinnati Milling Machine Company comes from the Cincinnati Screw & Tap Company, started by Frederick Holtz, who began making screws and taps in a kitchen about 1880. He made a milling machine with a wooden base for fluting his taps, because he was too poor to buy one. Lunkenheimer saw this machine and ordered one, and from this start came their present milling machine business. The firm became the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company in 1889 with Mr. Frederick A. Geier as president. Mr. A. L. DeLeeuw was for a number of years engineer for this company and his experiments in cutting tools have had a wide influence on all milling machine practice.

The prominence of Hamilton, Ohio, in tool building is due chiefly to the Niles Tool Works, which moved thither from Cincinnati about 1876. Before the war the old firm, Niles & Company, to which we have already referred, occasionally built tools for their own use. After the war, George Gray, who was their designer and superintendent, was sent through the eastern states to familiarize himself with machine tool building and the company took it up as part of their regular work. After their removal to Hamilton, they confined themselves wholly to this work and have grown to be one of the largest firms in the country in this field. About 1900 the Niles Tool Works were brought under the same management as Bement, Miles & Company of Philadelphia, the Pond Machine Tool Company of Plainfield, N. J., and the Pratt & Whitney Company of Hartford, and they are now operated as one of the plants of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company.

In 1880 Gray left the Niles Tool Works and started the Universal Radial Drill Company in Cincinnati. This company built the first round column radial drills, plain and universal, after Mr. Gray’s designs. He left the company in 1883 and about ten years later it ceased business. The G. A. Gray Company, which he started in 1883, at first built lathes, but has specialized on planers and is now one of the foremost firms in the country specializing in this type of tool.

As the demand for machine tools spread westward, tool building has followed it, and an increasing number of companies are springing up in Indiana, Illinois and Wisconsin. The oldest of these, the W. F. & John Barnes Company of Rockford, Ill., began making jig saws in 1872. Six years later they added the building of small lathes. About the same time they made some drill presses for their own use and then began manufacturing them for the trade. Later, tool grinders, arbor presses, radial and gang drills were added successively to their line of machines. Their only competitors were in Worcester and Cincinnati, and the high freight rates at that time gave them an important advantage in the West. Their early machinery, built to meet pioneer conditions, found a considerable market in the less developed foreign countries and they have built up a widespread export business.

Rockford has become a clearly defined center for tool builders. For many years the W. F. & John Barnes Company was the only one in the city, but in 1888 the Mechanics Machine Company was established. About 1893 the Ingersoll Milling Machine Company moved to Rockford from Cleveland, where Mr. Ingersoll had been associated with Cox & Prentiss. This company has been the leader in the development of heavy multiple-head milling machines of the planer type. The Barber-Coleman Company began making mechanics’ tools and gear cutters about 1896. The B. F. Barnes Company, now the Rockford Drilling Machine Company, and the Barnes Drill Company were established in 1897, by B. F. Barnes, a brother of W. F. and John Barnes, who had been associated with them for twenty years as superintendent. In addition to these firms there are the Rockford Machine Tool Company, the Rockford Milling Machine Company, the Rockford Lathe & Tool Company, the Rockford Iron Works and W. F. Lingren & Company. The first of these companies started in 1897, making shapers and planers. In 1913 it bought out the drill business of the older Mechanics Machine Company. It is said that one of the reasons why Rockford has become such a tool building center is that the neighborhood was settled by Swedish immigrants, who have furnished excellent material for the development of skilled mechanics.

The International Machine Tool Company of Indianapolis was established in 1906. This company manufactures the turret lathes developed by Mr. C. L. Libbey, who was for eleven years chief engineer and superintendent of the Bullard Machine Tool Company of Bridgeport; afterwards superintendent of the Pacific Iron Works of the same city, and of the Ludwig-Loewe & Company, Berlin, Germany; and for four years and a half construction engineer of the Gisholt Machine Company of Madison, Wis. From Madison he went to Indianapolis.

There are a number of tool builders in Chicago, but though a great manufacturing center, Chicago, like New York, has not specialized in tool building as have some of the smaller places. There are perhaps a dozen firms making large and small tools. Of those who build the larger types of tools, Charles H. Besly & Company, manufacturers of grinding machines, are best known.

Frederick M. Gardner, of Beloit, Wis., who was at one time with this company, was largely responsible for the development of disk grinding machines. Mr. Gardner was born in Ashfield, Mass., and served his apprenticeship with Wiley & Russell in Greenfield. From there he went to Pratt & Whitney’s, was later placed in charge of the small tool department until, about 1885, he was transferred to Chicago as their special western representative on the Pratt & Whitney tools then being sold by Charles H. Besly & Company. His acquaintance with Mr. Besly led to the formation of a company, of which Mr. Gardner was superintendent, located at Beloit because of Mr. Besly’s interest in the water power there. This company manufactured taps, dies, clamps and other small tools. The disk grinder was originated about 1890 for use in the manufacture of their clamps. For a number of years it retained substantially its first form, but with the advent of coarser grades of emery, a more powerful design with various refinements and adjustments was developed. In 1905 Mr. Gardner organized a separate company known as the Gardner Machine Company. Since that time still larger and more powerful machines have been designed, lever feeds and micrometer stop screws added, and various types, such as double spindle, vertical spindle and pattern makers’ grinders, built. Abrasive ring wheels, interchangeable with disk wheels allow the use of wet grinding and thus extend the field of this type of machine. Mr. F. N. Gardner died in 1913. His sons, who were with him from the origin of the disk grinder, are continuing his work in the Gardner Machine Company.

The Gisholt Machine Works at Madison, which grew out of a plant manufacturing agricultural machinery, has developed a widely used turret machine for chucking work invented by Mr. Conrad N. Conradson. This machine applied the turret principle to much larger work than it had been used for up to that time. Mr. Conradson has left the Gisholt Company and has since designed a powerful, multi-spindle automatic lathe which, like the Bullard machine (shown in Fig. 56), is vertical, and, although a lathe, it has assumed a form which would scarcely be recognized as such. This machine is built by the Giddings & Lewis Manufacturing Company of Fond du Lac, Wis.

Milwaukee is rapidly establishing a reputation for tool building. Kearney & Trecker and the Kempsmith Manufacturing Company are well-known builders of milling machines. Mr. Kempsmith, as we have already seen, was a Brown & Sharpe man, afterwards superintendent of Warner & Swasey and for sixteen years at Springfield, Ohio, with William Smith and Philip Montanus. Other tool builders such as the Milwaukee Machine Tool Company and the Steinle Turret Machine Company of Madison are helping to spread the art of tool building in this new region.

We have not been able to mention all of the western tool builders. Most of these firms have been established in recent years and are busy building up a market and a reputation. Some of them will take positions of leadership as Warner & Swasey and Lodge & Shipley have done, but this of course requires time.

There can be no “conclusion” to the history of a live and growing industry. A few of the present tendencies, however, may be pointed out.

One of the most far-reaching influences ever received by tool building came from the introduction of high speed steel through the work of Frederick W. Taylor and his associates. These steels made possible much heavier cuts, and increases in cutting speeds, to two or two and one-half times the previous prevailing practice. Mr. Taylor also made a remarkable investigation of the lathe-planer type of cutting tool. A. L. DeLeeuw and others have studied the milling cutter and twist drill and examined the causes of the failure of cutting edges in action, and the influence of large clearances for chips and coolants. The new cutting steels and these investigations have compelled an extensive redesign of machine tools during the past fifteen years, a process which is still going on as new demands are made upon the tool builders.

These years have also witnessed a development of the “station-type” of machine, or one in which there are multiple chucks, indexed from station to station, one position being used for putting in and taking out work while a succession of operations is simultaneously going on at the other stations. In general these are high production machines suitable for long runs of standard work. The multi-spindle automatic bar-stock lathe is an example. One of the latest of these station-type tools is the vertical machine shown in Fig. 56, which performs all the functions of an engine lathe and is in effect five lathes in one machine.

Another development of recent years has been the extension of the grinding process, both for the rapid removal of metal and for precision work. This has been made possible by the introduction of new and more active abrasives.

The map, Fig. 57,[219] gives a bird’s-eye view of the distribution of the tool building industry in the United States, and shows that it is located in a rectangle which includes southern New England and that portion of the Atlantic and Middle States lying roughly north of the Potomac and Ohio and east of the Mississippi rivers. The strong tendency toward concentration in certain localities is clearly seen. (Each dot in the map represents a shop.) Of the 570 plants shown, 117 are in Ohio, 98 in Massachusetts, 66 in Connecticut, 60 in Pennsylvania, 57 in New York, 42 in Illinois, 29 in Michigan and 18 in Wisconsin. Thirty years ago practically none would have been found west of Buffalo. Today the majority are there, although most of the more important companies are still in the East. Unquestionably this will equalize itself as the newer western shops develop.

The general types of machine tools seem to be firmly established, and new or startling inventions and revolutionary changes seem unlikely. The present trend is toward higher speeds, heavier cuts with the use of great quantities of lubricant, further refinements of jigs and holding devices, and the use of highly developed automatic machines which may be operated by unskilled labor.

The unprecedented demand upon American tool builders made by the European War has vastly increased their facilities, and will probably tend to establish them even more firmly as world leaders in the industry.