THE COLT ARMORY
The city of Hartford has been more closely identified with the later
development of interchangeable manufacture than almost any other city.
The gun makers have been so vital an element in its industrial life
that, before leaving them, we will trace their influence.
The grist and saw mills, always the pioneers, had made their
appearance in the seventeenth century. With recurring attempts at silk
manufacture, most of the meager industrial life was directed toward
some branch of textiles up to and even after 1800.
In 1747 Col. Joseph Pitkin started a prosperous forge for making
bar iron and a mill for iron slitting. It was killed by the Act of
Parliament of 1750, already referred to, but the Pitkin family balanced
the account by using the buildings during the Revolution to make
powder for the Continental army. Later the buildings were put to their
original use. The Pitkins were industrial leaders for many years in
textiles, and in the manufacture of silverware, clocks, watches, and
heating apparatus. Henry and James F. Pitkin made the old “American
lever” watches in 1834, and many of the early workmen who went to
Waltham were trained by them.
[Illustration: FIGURE 31. SAMUEL COLT]
The assessors’ returns for 1846 to the Secretary of State gave for
Hartford only three “machine factories” with a total capital of
$25,000, an annual output of $35,000, and forty-five men employed.
There were two boiler shops, a screw factory, a plow factory, a pin
factory, two brass and four iron foundries, and one poor gun maker
who did a business of $625 a year. Taken together, these enterprises
averaged only about $15,000 in capital, $20,000 in annual output and
fifteen employees each. This is hardly more than would be expected
in any town of its size, and certainly does not mark the city as a
manufacturing center. Book publishing employed over twice, and clothing
shops more than four times, as many men as all the machine shops
together.
In 1821 Alpheus and Truman Hanks purchased a small foundry and began
the business which later became Woodruff & Beach. This firm had a long
and successful career in building heavy machinery, engines and boilers,
and was among the earliest makers of iron plows. In 1871 it became H.
B. Beach & Son, boiler makers, and the firm is still running, H. L.
Beach being now (1914) the only survivor of the old works.
In 1834 Levi Lincoln started the Phœnix Iron Works. Under various names
(George S. Lincoln & Company, Charles L. Lincoln & Company, The Lincoln
Company, The Taylor & Fenn Company) the business has been maintained
by his descendants to this day. Levi Lincoln invented a number of
machines, among them the first successful hook-and-eye machine for
Henry North of New Britain, which became very valuable and helped to
lay the foundation of the prosperity of that town. George S. Lincoln
& Company built machine tools, architectural iron work and vaults.
Their name is permanently associated with the “Lincoln” miller, which
was first built in 1855 in their shop for the new Colt Armory, from
the design of F. A. Pratt. It was an adaptation and improvement of a
Robbins & Lawrence miller which had been brought to Hartford a year or
two before. Few machines have changed so little or have been used so
widely. It has been said that more than 150,000 of them have been built
in this country and abroad. Even in Europe, the type is definitely
known by this name.
The building of the Colt Armory in 1853 to 1854 marks a definite era
in Hartford’s history and the beginning of manufacturing there on a
large scale. Samuel Colt had an adventurous life, and died in the midst
of his success while less than fifty years old. Born in Hartford in
1814, he had a rather stormy career as a schoolboy and shipped before
the mast to Calcutta before he was sixteen. After his return from this
voyage, he worked for some months in his father’s dye works at Ware,
Mass., where he got a smattering of chemistry. At eighteen he started
out again, this time as a lecturer under the name of “Dr. Coult,”
giving demonstrations of nitrous-oxide, or laughing gas, which was
little known to the public at that time. Dr. Coult’s “lectures” were
frankly popular, with a view more to laughter than the imparting of
knowledge, but he was clever and a good advertiser. It is said that
he gave laughing gas to more men, women and children than any other
lecturer since chemistry was first known. For three years he drifted
over the country from Quebec to New Orleans, getting into all kinds of
experiences, from administering gas for cholera when impressed into
service on account of his assumed title, to fleeing the stage from big
blacksmiths who took laughing gas too seriously and actively.
He made the first crude model of his revolver on his voyage to Calcutta
and used the means derived from his “lectures” for developing the
invention. In 1835 he went to England and took out his first patent
there and on his return in 1836 he took out his first American patent.
These covered a firearm with a rotating cylinder containing several
chambers, to be discharged through a single barrel. The same year,
1836, he organized the Patent Fire Arms Company at Paterson, N. J.,
and tried to get the revolver adopted by the United States Government.
In 1837 an army board reported “that from its complicated character,
its liability to accident, and other reasons, this arm was entirely
unsuited to the general purposes of the service.”
Colt’s first market was secured on the Texas frontier. His earliest
revolvers are known as the Walker and Texas models, and the hold
which he acquired with frontiersmen at that time has never been lost.
The Seminole War in Florida gave Colt an opportunity to demonstrate
the value of the revolver. In 1840 two government boards gave it a
qualified approbation and two small orders followed, one for one
hundred and the other for sixty weapons. The pistols, however, were
expensive, the sales small, and in 1842 the Paterson company failed and
ceased business.
In the next few years the tide turned. The superiority of the revolvers
outstanding was creating a great demand. With the breaking out of the
Mexican War in 1846 came two orders for 1000 pistols each, and from
that time onward Colt’s career was one of rapid and brilliant success.
As his Paterson plant had closed, Colt had the first of the large
government orders made at the Whitney Armory in New Haven, where he
followed minutely every detail of their manufacture. The following
year, 1848, Colt moved to Hartford and for a few years rented a small
building near the center of the city. With rapidly increasing business,
larger quarters soon became necessary.
In 1853 he began his new armory, shown in Fig. 32. South of the city
on the river front, lay an extensive flat, overflowed at high water
and consequently nearly valueless. He purchased a large tract of this,
built a protective dike 30 feet high and 1³⁄₄ miles long, and drained
it. His armory built on this site marks an epoch not only in the
history of Hartford, but in American manufacturing.
After the failure of his first venture at Paterson, Colt had seen the
advantage of interchangeable manufacture at the Whitney shop, and
determined to carry it even further in his new plant. So thoroughly
was this done that the methods crystallized there, and many of the
tools installed have undergone little change to this day. Machine work
almost wholly superseded hand work. Modern machines were developed,
and interchangeability and standards of accuracy given an entirely new
meaning.
The building was in the form of an “H,” 500 feet long and 3¹⁄₂ stories
high. It contained over 1400 machines, the greater part of which were
designed and built on the premises. The tools and fixtures cost about
as much as the machines themselves, a proportion unheard of before.
In 1861 the plant was doubled. Three years later the first building
was burned to the ground, but was immediately rebuilt. This plant was
the largest private armory in the world and far-and-away the best then
existing for economical and accurate production of a high-grade output.
Many rivals have sprung up in the past sixty years, but the Colt Armory
is still one of the leading gun factories of the world.
Colonel Colt was a remarkable man, masterful, daring and brilliant. He
started the larger industrial development of his city, and affected
manufacturing methods more than any other man of his generation.
[Illustration: FIGURE 32. THE COLT ARMORY
FROM AN OLD WOOD-CUT]
One of the elements of his success was his ability to gather and hold
about him men of the highest order. Among these was Elisha K. Root,
one of the ablest mechanics New England has ever produced. Root was
a Massachusetts farmer’s boy, a few years older than Colt. He served
an apprenticeship, worked at Ware and at Chicopee Falls, and came to
the Collins Company, axe makers, at Collinsville, Conn., in 1832. He
began work there as a lathe hand in the repair shop, but very soon
became foreman and virtual superintendent. His inventions and methods
converted a primitive shop into a modern factory and gave the Collins
Company control, for a long time, of the American market, and opened up
a large export trade. In 1845 he was made superintendent, and that same
year was offered three important positions elsewhere, one of them that
of master armorer at Springfield.
In 1849 Colt offered him the position of superintendent at a large
salary. It was characteristic of Colt that, although he was just
starting and still in small rented quarters, he outbid three others to
get the best superintendent in New England. Root moved to Hartford,
designed and built the new armory and installed its machinery. Many of
the machines devised by him at that time are still running, holding
their own in accuracy and economy of production with those of today.
Almost every process used in the plant felt his influence. He invented
the best form of drop hammer then in use, machines for boring, rifling,
making cartridges, stock turning, splining, etc., and worked out the
whole system of jigs, fixtures, tools and gauges. The credit for the
revolver belongs to Colt; for the way they were made, mainly to Root.
Fig. 33, a chucking lathe, and Fig. 34, a splining machine, are two of
Mr. Root’s machines which are still at work. When Colonel Colt died,
Mr. Root became president of the company and continued until his death
in 1865, receiving, it is said, the highest salary paid in the state
of Connecticut. He was a mechanic and inventor of high order, a wise
executive, and the success of the two companies he served was in a
large measure due to him. He was quiet, thoughtful and modest. His
influence went into flesh and blood as well as iron and steel, for
under him have worked F. A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, Charles E. Billings
and C. M. Spencer, George A. Fairfield, of the Hartford Machine Screw
Company, William Mason and a host of others whom we cannot mention
here. Like a parent, a superintendent may be judged, in some measure,
by the children he rears, and few superintendents can show such a
family.
Within a few years after the building of the Colt Armory, manufacturing
at Hartford had taken a definite character. From that day to this
it has centered almost wholly on high-grade products, such as guns,
sewing machines, typewriters, bicycles, automobiles and machine tools.
Naturally, during the past generation, the skilled mechanics of the
city have attracted many new and important industries, only indirectly
connected with the armory, which we cannot consider here.
In 1848 Christian Sharps invented his breech-loading rifle, and in
1851 a company was formed at Hartford to manufacture it. Richard S.
Lawrence came from Windsor, Vt., as its master armorer, and is said
to have brought with him the first miller used in the city. They did
a large business for some years, but later moved to Bridgeport, and
the plant was sold to the Weed Sewing Machine Company. C. E. Billings
and George A. Fairfield, both “Colt men,” were superintendents of this
plant. When the Columbia bicycles were introduced, the Weed Sewing
Machine Company made them for the Pope Manufacturing Company of Boston.
Later this company bought the plant, and it became one of the greatest
bicycle factories in the world. Of late years it has been used for the
manufacture of automobiles.
[Illustration: FIGURE 33. ROOT’S CHUCKING LATHE
ABOUT 1855]
[Illustration: FIGURE 34. ROOT’S SPLINING MACHINE
ABOUT 1855]
Two great industries sprang up in the neighborhood of Hartford in
the early days and had a vigorous life quite independent of it. We
have noted that Levi Lincoln contributed to the establishment of the
hardware industry at New Britain. Although New Britain is but a few
miles from Hartford, its manufactures have moved in a distinctly
different direction. In fact, by 1820 it had taken its character as
a hardware manufacturing center. North & Shipman had begun making
sleigh-bells, hooks and plated goods, and Lee was making buttons and
saddlery hardware. In 1839 Henry E. Russell and Cornelius B. Erwin
became active partners in Stanley, Russell & Company, the beginning
of the Russell & Erwin Manufacturing Company. The Stanley Works and
Landers, Frary & Clark had their beginnings in 1842; P. & F. Corbin
in 1848, and the Stanley Rule & Level Company in 1854. About the same
time, Elnathan Peck, after a partnership with George Dewey and Henry
Walter, sold out to J. B. Sargent, who later moved to New Haven. Mr.
Peck also moved to New Haven and started what is now Peck Brothers. It
is a remarkable case of the localization of a great industry. These
companies, all large and important, started within fifteen years in one
small village of only a few thousand inhabitants.
The other industry which started near Hartford but has developed
separately is the manufacture of clocks. Early in the nineteenth
century Eli Terry, first at Windsor, just north of Hartford, and later
at what is now Thomaston, Conn., began using machinery in making wooden
clocks, and by 1840 he had reduced the price for a movement from $50 to
$5. About 1840 Chauncey Jerome, an apprentice of Terry’s, introduced
the one-day brass clock which could be made for less than fifty cents.
In 1842 he shipped his first consignment to England. They were
promptly confiscated at their invoice prices by the customs authorities
for under-valuation. This was perfectly agreeable to Jerome, as it
furnished him with a spot-cash buyer at full price, with no selling
expenses. He therefore sent another and larger shipment, which shared
the same fate. When a third still larger one arrived, the authorities
withdrew from the clock business and let it in. The exports soon spread
everywhere, and today Connecticut manufactures three-fifths of the
clocks produced in the United States.
Nearly all the great clock companies of Connecticut, like the New
Haven, Seth Thomas and Waterbury companies, trace back directly or
indirectly to Jerome and Terry.