THE COLT WORKMEN--PRATT & WHITNEY
At least two of the superintendents of the Colt Armory should be
mentioned--Prof. Charles B. Richards and William Mason.
Mr. Richards was not primarily a tool builder, but his contributions to
mechanical engineering are too great to pass without notice. About 1860
he helped Charles T. Porter develop the design of the first high-speed
steam engine, and in order to study the action of this engine he
invented the Richards steam engine indicator. Indicators, more or
less crude, had been in use from the time of Watt, but the Richards
indicator was the first one accurate enough and delicate enough to
meet the demands of modern engine practice; and its influence has been
far-reaching. After a few years in New York as a consulting engineer,
he was for many years in the Colt Armory as engineering superintendent
under Mr. Root, and later was superintendent of the Southwark Foundry
& Machine Company in Philadelphia. In 1884 he became Professor of
Mechanical Engineering at the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale
University, where he remained for twenty-five years as the head of the
mechanical engineering department.
William Mason was another of those who helped make the Colt Armory
what it was. He was a modest, kindly man, little known outside of his
immediate associates, but of singular fertility in invention and almost
unerring mechanical judgment. He learned his trade with the Remington
Arms Company at Ilion, N. Y., and after a long association with them
he was for sixteen years superintendent of the Colt Armory. In 1885 he
became master mechanic of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New
Haven, and held that position until his death in 1913. He had granted
to him more than 125 patents, most of them in connection with arms and
ammunition and tools for their manufacture, but they included many
appliances for looms and weaving, steam pumps, and bridge work, and he
assisted with the development of the Knowles steam pump and Knowles
looms.
Asa Cook, a brother-in-law of F. A. Pratt, was for years a foreman and
contractor at Colt’s. He was afterwards a designer and manufacturer
of machinery for making wood screws, bolt machinery and many other
types of tools. George A. Fairfield, another Colt foreman, became
superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine factory and later president
of the Hartford Machine Screw Company; another workman, A. F. Cushman,
of the Cushman Chuck Company, for many years manufactured lathe chucks.
In fact, there is hardly a shop in Hartford which dates from the
seventies and eighties which does not trace back in some way to the
Colt Armory. Its influence is by no means confined to Hartford, for
such men as Bullard and Gleason carried its standards and methods to
other cities.
Four of the Colt workmen formed two partnerships of wide influence:
Charles E. Billings and Christopher M. Spencer, who organized the
Billings & Spencer Company, and Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, of
the Pratt & Whitney Company.
Charles E. Billings was a Vermonter, who served his apprenticeship in
the old Robbins & Lawrence shop at Windsor, Vt. When twenty-one, he
came to Colt’s, in 1856, as a die sinker and tool maker and became
their expert on the drop forging process. In 1862 he went to E.
Remington & Sons, where he built up their forging plant, increasing its
efficiency many times, saving $50,000, it is said, by one improvement
in frame forging alone. At the end of the war he returned to Hartford
as the superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine Company, which had
taken over the old Sharps Rifle Works, built by Robbins & Lawrence. For
a short time in 1868 Mr. Billings was at Amherst, Mass., associated
with Spencer in the Roper Repeating Arms Company. The venture was not
a success, and the next year, 1869, they came back to Hartford and
formed the Billings & Spencer Company. This company has probably done
more than any other for the art of drop forging, not only in developing
the modern board drop hammer itself, but in extending the accuracy and
application of the process. Mr. Billings was president of the American
Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1895.
Christopher M. Spencer was born at Manchester, Conn. He served his
apprenticeship in the machine shops of the silk mills there from 1847
to 1849, and remained for several years as a journeyman machinist
with Cheney Brothers. In 1853 he went to Rochester, N. Y., to learn
something of the other kinds of machinery, working in a tool building
shop and a locomotive shop. After some years at the Colt Armory he
went back to Cheney Brothers and soon obtained his first patent for an
automatic silk-winding machine. This was adopted by the Willimantic
Linen Company, with some modifications made by Hezekiah Conant, and was
the machine which Pratt & Whitney began manufacturing in their first
rented room in Hartford.
Mr. Spencer has had a passion for firearms from boyhood. In 1860 he
obtained a patent for the Spencer repeating rifle. The Civil War
created a tremendous demand for it, and the Government ordered first
1000, then 10,000, and before the war was over it had purchased about
200,000. In 1862, while the first contracts were pending, Spencer
saw President Lincoln at Washington. He and Lincoln went down on the
White House grounds with the new rifle, set up a board and shot at it.
Lincoln enjoyed it like a schoolboy, and shot well, too. He tore his
coat pocket in the process, but told Spencer not to worry over it, as
he “never had anything of value in it to lose.”
At the close of the war Spencer went to Amherst and was there first
associated with C. E. Billings in the Roper Company, as we noted. A
year later he joined in starting the Billings & Spencer Company and
coöperated with him in the development of the drop hammer.
A successful machine which Spencer invented for turning sewing machine
spools suggested to Spencer the possibility of making metal screws
automatically. The result was his invention of the automatic turret
lathe. The importance of the blank cam cylinder, with its flat strips
adjustable for various jobs, was wholly over-looked by his patent
attorney, with the result that Spencer obtained no patent right on the
most valuable feature in the whole machine.
The importance of this invention can hardly be overestimated. It ranks
with Maudslay’s slide-rest and the turret tool-holder, as it is an
essential feature in all modern automatic lathes, both for bar-stock
and chucking work.
Assured of the success of the machine, Spencer withdrew from active
connection with the Billings & Spencer Company in 1874, and in 1876,
with George A. Fairfield, then superintendent of the Weed Sewing
Machine Company, and others, formed the Hartford Machine Screw Company,
one of the most successful enterprises in the city. Unfortunately, Mr.
Spencer withdrew in 1882 to manufacture a new repeating shotgun and
rifle which he had invented. The gun was a success mechanically, but
the Spencer Arms Company, which had been formed in 1883 at Windsor,
Conn., was a failure, and Mr. Spencer lost heavily. In his later years
Mr. Spencer has returned to the field where he did his most brilliant
work, automatic lathes. He represents the New England mechanic at his
best, and his tireless and productive ingenuity has made a permanent
impress on modern manufacturing methods.
Francis A. Pratt was born at Woodstock, Vt. When he was eight years old
his family moved to Lowell. He was a mechanic from boyhood but he had
the good fortune to be apprenticed as a machinist with Warren Aldrich,
a good mechanic and a wise teacher. At twenty, Mr. Pratt went to
Gloucester, N. J., where he was employed first as a journeyman, later
as a contractor. In 1852 he came to the Colt shop, where he worked for
two years. He then accepted the foremanship of the Phœnix Iron Works,
which was run by Levi Lincoln and his two sons.
Amos Whitney was born in Maine and moved to Lawrence, Mass., where
he served his apprenticeship with the Essex Machine Company which
built cotton machinery, locomotives and machine tools. He came from
a family of mechanics. His father was a locksmith and machinist, his
grandfather was an expert blacksmith, his great-grandfather was a small
manufacturer of agricultural tools, and he is of the same family as Eli
Whitney of New Haven, and Baxter D. Whitney, the veteran tool builder
of Winchendon. In 1850 both he and his father were working at Colt’s
factory at Hartford. In 1854 Amos Whitney joined Pratt in the Phœnix
Iron Works, where they worked together for ten years, the former as
a contractor, the latter as superintendent. Whitney was earning over
eight dollars a day when he left Colt’s and took up the new contract
work which offered at the beginning only two dollars a day.
Many of the shops of that generation were “contract shops.” The
Colt Armory was run on that basis, at least in its manufacturing
departments. Under this system the firm or company furnished all the
materials, machinery, tools, shop room and supplies, while the workmen
were employed by the contractor, their wages being paid by the firm but
charged against the contractor’s account. A better training for future
manufacturers could hardly be devised, and a surprising number of these
old-time contractors have succeeded later in business for themselves.
In the summer of 1860 Pratt and Whitney rented a small room and, in
addition to their regular employment, began doing work on their own
account, i.e., manufacturing the small winder for the Willimantic
Linen Company. Mr. Whitney’s father-in-law acted as pattern maker,
millwright, bookkeeper and general utility man. The following February
they were burned out, but were running again a month later in other
quarters. Here they continued to spread from room to room until all
available space was outgrown. They succeeded from the very start, and
at once became leaders and teachers of other mechanics, suggesters
of new methods of work and of new means for its accomplishment. Both
Pratt and Whitney were thoroughly familiar with gun manufacture, and
the business was hardly started when the outbreak of the Civil War
gave them more than they could do. In 1862 they took into partnership
Monroe Stannard of New Britain, each of the three contributing $1200.
Mr. Stannard took charge of the shop, as Pratt and Whitney were still
with the Phœnix Iron Works. Within two years the business had increased
to such an extent that they gave up their positions at the Phœnix
works and in 1865 erected the first building on their present site.
From $3600 in 1862 their net assets grew in four years to $75,000, and
during the three years following that they earned and put back into the
business more than $100,000. In 1869 the Pratt & Whitney Company was
formed with a capital of $350,000, later increased to $500,000. In 1893
it was reorganized with a capitalization of $3,000,000. Since that time
it has become a part of the Niles-Bement-Pond Company.
[Illustration: FIGURE 35. FRANCIS A. PRATT]
[Illustration: FIGURE 36. AMOS WHITNEY]
Beginning with the manufacture of machine tools and tools for making
guns and sewing machines, they have extended their lines until their
catalog fills hundreds of pages. From their wide experience in
interchangeable manufacture, it was natural that they should take a
prominent part in developing the machinery for the manufacture of
bicycles and typewriters, when, later, these were introduced.
Soon after the Franco-Prussian War, an agent of the company visited
Prussia and found the royal and private gun factories equipped with old
and inferior machinery and the armories bare. Mr. Pratt was sent for,
and returned to Hartford with orders from the German Government for
$350,000 worth of gun machinery. During the next few years Mr. Pratt
made no less than ten trips to Europe, taking orders aggregating over
$2,000,000 worth of machinery. When the panic of 1873 prostrated the
industries of the United States, Pratt & Whitney had orders, mostly
foreign, which kept them busy until 1875. Their equipment of the three
royal armories of Spandau, Erfurt and Danzig resulted in an improvement
in quality of output and a saving of 50 per cent in wages. Pratt &
Whitney’s production of gun-making machinery alone has run into many
millions of dollars, and there are few governments which have not at
one time or another purchased from them.
Pratt & Whitney from the start were leaders in establishing standards,
particularly in screw threads. Their gauges for pipe threads have for
years been the standard for the country. The troubles which arose from
the lack of agreement of standard gauges and the growing demand for
interchangeable bolts and nuts led to a demand on the company for a set
of gauges upon which all could agree.
In undertaking this work Pratt & Whitney examined their own standards
of length with reference to government and other standards in
this country and abroad. The results were conflicting and very
unsatisfactory. By different measurements the same bar would
be reported as above and as below the standard length, and the
investigation produced no results which could be used for a working
basis. At length Prof. William A. Rogers of Harvard University, and
George M. Bond, backed by the Pratt & Whitney Company, developed
the Rogers-Bond comparator with which they determined the length of
the standard foot. When they began, the length of the yard and its
subdivisions varied with the number of yardsticks. Professor Rogers’
work was based on line measurement rather than the end measurement
which had held sway from the time of Whitworth and which is now
generally recognized to be inferior for final reference work. Professor
Rogers went back of all the secondary standards to the Imperial Yard
in London and the standard meter in the Archives at Paris. He obtained
reliable transfers of these, and with the coöperation of the United
States Coast Survey, the most delicate and exhaustive comparisons were
made of the standard bars prepared by him for the use of the company
with the government standard yard designated “Bronze No. 11.” Many
thousands of dollars and three years of time went into this work.
The methods used and the results obtained were examined and reported
upon by a committee of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers,
and the conclusion given in their report is as follows:
The completion of the Rogers-Bond comparator marks a long stride
in advance over any method hitherto in use for comparison and
subdivision of line-measure standards, combining, as it does, all the
approved methods of former observers with others original with the
designers. Comparisons can thus be checked thoroughly by different
systems, so that the final result of the series may be relied on as
being much nearer absolute accuracy than any hitherto produced.
The calipering attachment to the comparator deserves special
commendation, being simple in the extreme, and solving completely the
problem of end measurements within the limit of accuracy attainable
in line reading, by means of the microscope with the micrometer
eye-piece. The standard to which the end measurements are referred is
not touched, and each measurement is referred back to the same zero,
so that error from end wear does not enter into the problem. This
attachment is in advance of all hitherto known methods of comparing
end measures, either with other end measures or with line standards,
both as to rapidity of manipulation and accuracy of its readings,
the strong point in its construction being that it refers all end
measures to a carefully divided and investigated standard bar, which
is not touched during its use, and cannot be in the slightest degree
injured by this service, thus giving convincing assurance that
the measures and gauges produced by its use will be accurate and
interchangeable.
In the opinion of this committee, the degree of accuracy already
attained is such that no future improvements can occasion changes
sufficiently great to affect the practical usefulness of the
magnitudes here determined, or the interchangeability of structures
based upon them with those involving further refinement.
Prof. W. A. Rogers and Mr. George M. Bond are unquestionably entitled
to great credit for the admirable manner in which they have solved
the problem of exact and uniform measurement, while the enterprise
of the Pratt & Whitney Company in bringing the whole matter into
practical shape, is deserving of the thanks of the engineering
community.[183]
[183] Those interested may find detailed descriptions of the methods
used and of the Rogers-Bond comparator in the following references:
George M. Bond: Paper on “Standard Measurements,” Trans. A. S. M.
E., Vol. II, p. 80. George M. Bond: Paper on “A Standard Gauge
System,” Trans. A. S. M. E., Vol. III, p. 122. Report of Committee
on Standards and Gauges, Trans. A. S. M. E., Vol. IV, p. 21 (quoted
above). W. A. Rogers: Paper, “On a Practical Solution of the
Perfect Screw Problem,” Trans. A. S. M. E., Vol. V, p. 216. Two
lectures delivered by George M. Bond before the Franklin Institute,
Philadelphia, in 1884, on: 1. “Standards of Length and their
Subdivision.” 2. “Standards of Length as Applied to Gauge Dimensions.”
The standards so obtained became the basis of the gauges which Pratt &
Whitney have produced.
In 1888 the company received its first order for Hotchkiss revolving
cannon, and for three- and six-pounders rapid-fire guns. They have made
hundreds of these guns for the secondary batteries of war vessels.
In 1895 they brought out a one-pounder invented by E. G. Parkhurst,
an expert mechanic, who had entered their employment as assistant
superintendent in 1869 and later took charge of their gun department.
For many years the Pratt & Whitney tool-room lathes were the standard
for the country. Later their leadership was materially affected by the
Hendey Machine Company of Torrington, Conn., who built a high grade
tool-room lathe having the change-gear box which has since been applied
to nearly all types of machine tools. The change-gear box is one of the
important contributions to tool building made in recent years. Among
the later developments introduced by Pratt & Whitney is the process of
thread milling, and they have designed a full line of machines for this
work.
The Pratt & Whitney works, like the Colt Armory, has been a training
school for successful tool builders. Worcester R. Warner and Ambrose
Swasey were both foremen at Pratt & Whitney’s and left there to go
west, first to Chicago and then to Cleveland. Some account of these two
men will be given in a later chapter. Pratt & Whitney have had a marked
influence on tool building in Cleveland, for, in addition to Warner and
Swasey, E. C. Henn and Hakewessel of the National Acme Manufacturing
Company who developed the multi-spindle automatic lathe, A. F. Foote
of Foote, Burt & Company, and George C. Bardons of Bardons & Oliver,
come from their shop. Johnston of Potter & Johnston, Pawtucket, was
chief draftsman at Pratt & Whitney’s; and J. N. Lapointe who later
developed the broaching machine, Dudley Seymour of Chicago, Gleason of
the Gleason Works in Rochester, E. P. Bullard of Bridgeport, and F.
N. Gardner of Beloit, Wis., inventor of the Gardner grinder, were all
workmen there.
Mr. Gleason was also a workman in the Colt Armory. He went to Rochester
in 1865 and the works which he developed form the most important tool
building interest in western New York. There have been “a good many
starts there in tool building and almost as many finishes.” Mr. Gleason
always said that but for the training and methods he had gained at
Hartford he would have shared their fate. Like many others, his company
began with a general line of machine tools but has come to specialize
on one type of machine, bevel-gear cutters, of which they build a most
refined type.
E. P. Bullard, like Gleason, worked at both Colt’s and Pratt &
Whitney’s. Later he formed a partnership with J. H. Prest and
William Parsons, manufacturing millwork and “all kinds of tools”
in Hartford. In 1866 he organized the Norwalk Iron Works Company
of Norwalk, but afterwards withdrew and continued the business in
Hartford. For a number of years Mr. Bullard was in the South and
Middle West, at Athens, Ga., at Cincinnati, where he organized the
machine tool department of Post & Company, and at Columbus, where
he was superintendent of the Gill Car Works. In 1875 he established
a machinery business in Beekman Street, New York, under the firm
name of Allis, Bullard & Company. Mr. Allis withdrew in 1877 and the
Bullard Machine Company was organized. Recognizing a demand for a high
grade lathe he went to Bridgeport, Conn., and engaged A. D. Laws to
manufacture lathes of his design, agreeing to take his entire output.
In the latter part of the same year Mr. Bullard took over the business
and it became the Bridgeport Machine Tool Works. In 1883 he designed
his first vertical boring and turning mill, a single head, belt feed
machine of 37 inches capacity. This is believed to be the first small
boring machine designed to do the accurate work previously performed
on the face plate of a lathe. Up to that time boring machines were
relied on only for large and rough work. In 1889 he transferred his
New York connections to J. J. McCabe and gave his entire attention to
manufacturing, the business being incorporated as the Bullard Machine
Tool Company in 1894.
The building of boring mills gradually crowded out the lathes, and for
twenty years the company has concentrated on the boring machine as a
specialty. In their hands it has received a remarkable development.
They introduced a range of small-sized mills capable of much more
accurate work than had been done on this type of machine. They applied
the turret principle to the head carried on the cross rail and a few
years later introduced a mill having a head carried on the side of
the frame which permitted of the close working of the tools. These
improvements transformed the boring mill into a manufacturing machine,
and it became practically a vertical turret lathe with the advantages
inherent in that type of machine. This trend toward the lathe type
has finally resulted in a multiple station-type of machine which is
in effect a vertical multi-spindle automatic chucking lathe with five
independent tool heads, as shown in Fig. 56. Comparison of this with
Fig. 15, shows how the lathe has developed in the 115 years since
Maudslay introduced the slide-rest principle and the lead screw.