ROBBINS & LAWRENCE
A glance at the genealogical chart, Fig. 37, will show why the old
Robbins & Lawrence shop, at Windsor, Vt., in the backwoods of northern
New England, deserves a special chapter. When built, it was miles away
from a railroad. It was never large, and the wheels of the original
shop have long since ceased to turn, but few plants have had so great
an influence on American manufacturing. Three brilliant mechanics,
Lawrence, Howe and Stone, were working there in the early fifties, and
from them and their successors came wholly, or in part, the vertical
lathe turret, the miller, the profiler and a large number of the modern
machines used in interchangeable manufacture. Of these three, Lawrence
went to Hartford, Howe to Providence, while Stone remained at Windsor.
In each case an important line of influence may be traced.
In the region about Windsor, sixty or seventy years ago, there were a
number of small custom gun shops, and one firm, N. Kendall & Company,
was regularly making guns at the Windsor prison, using prison labor
in addition to that of a number of free mechanics, who did the finer
work. The history of the Robbins & Lawrence Company begins about 1838,
when Lawrence came to Windsor from the neighborhood of Watertown, N.
Y. Fortunately he wrote out an account of his life shortly before his
death, at the request of his son, giving a very interesting record
of his early work and his connections with his various manufacturing
enterprises. This account shows clearly the integrity, modesty and
worth of the man.[184]
[184] By the courtesy of Mr. Ned Lawrence this account is given in
Appendix A. It has never been published before.
[Illustration:
N. KENDALL & CO. R. S LAWRENCE
Kendall & Lawrence
Custom Gun Shop, Windsor, Vt.
*1*
#1#
ROBBINS & LAWRENCE
Guns and Gun Machinery, Turret Lathes, Millers, etc.
R S. Lawrence, H. D. Stone, F. W. Howe
*2 3 4 5 6 7*
#2# #7#
ENFIELD GUN MACHRY., 1855 CHAS. E. BILLINGS
Enfield, England Billings & Spencer,
Hartford
#5#
LAMSON, GOODNOW &
#3# YALE, 1859 #6#
SHARPS RIFLE WORKS later PROVIDENCE J. R. BROWN
Hartford, Conn. E. G. LAMSON & CO. TOOL WORKS S. B. DARLING,
*8* Guns, Sewing F. W. Howe, ETC.
Machines, Machine Supt., *12*
Tools, 1853-68
Windsor *10 11*
*9*
#4#
J. D. ALVORD
a contractor in R. & L. Shop,
Hartford & Sharpe Wks. Built the
Wheeler & Wilson Shop,
Bridgeport
*13*
#8# #9# #11 12#
WEED SEWING MACH. Sewing Machine business sold BROWN & SHARPE
CO. about 1861 to Mr. White F. W. Howe, Supt.,
Hartford, Conn. *15 16* 1868-73
*14* Plain and Univ.
Millers, Turret
Lathes
#14# #10#
POPE MFG. CO. RHODE ISLAND TOOL CO.
Hartford, Conn. Successors of Providence Tool
Works
#13#
WHEELER & WILSON PUTNAM MACH. CO.
Bridgeport, Conn. Fitchburg, Mass.
Sewing Machines S. C. Wright
*17*
#15# #16# #19#
WHITE SEWING MACH. WINDSOR MANUFACTURING SULLIVAN MACHRY. CO.
CO. CO. Claremont, N. H.
Cleveland, O. 1865 Mine and Quarrying
*20* *18 19* Machinery
#20# #18 21#
CLEVELAND AUTO MACH. JONES, LAMSON & CO., JAMES HARTNESS
CO., ETC. 1869 1889
Cleveland, O. JONES & LAMSON MACHINE *21 22*
CO., 1879
#23 28# Moved from Windsor to #17 22 25 27#
WINDSOR MACHINE CO. Springfield, Vt., in FITCHBURG MACH. WORKS
Windsor, Vt., 1889, 1889 Fitchburg, Mass.
Gridley Automation Hartness Flat Turret, Lo-Swing Lathe
Fay Automatic Lathes
*23 24*
#24#
JAMES HARTNESS
#29# *25 27* #26#
BRYANT CHUCKING E. R. FELLOWS FELLOWS GEAR
GRINDER CO. *26* SHAPER CO.
Springfield, Vt. G. O. GRIDLEY Springfield, Vt.
*28*
Wm. BRYANT
*29*
FIGURE 37. GENEALOGY OF THE ROBBINS & LAWRENCE SHOP]
Richard S. Lawrence, whose portrait appears in Fig. 40, was born
in Chester, Vt., in 1817. When two years old, his father moved to
Jefferson County, N. Y., and his boyhood was spent in the neighborhood
of Watertown. He was only nine years old when his father died, and
consequently he had a hard boyhood, with very little schooling, and was
early at work in the support of the family. He worked on a farm and
later in a woodworking shop, making carpenter’s and joiner’s tools.
In the basement of this place was a custom gun shop, where he spent
much of his spare time and became an expert gun maker. He worked with
indifferent success at various jobs until the winter of 1837-1838, when
he served in the United States army for three months, guarding the
frontier during the Canadian Rebellion. At his discharge he determined
to start in elsewhere for himself and thought of his relatives in
Vermont. After a long journey by the Erie Canal, the newly built Albany
& Schenectady Railroad, and by stage, he reached Windsor in 1838.
A week or two after his arrival, while visiting a Doctor Story, he
undertook to repair an old rifle, a “Turkey rifle,” made by the
doctor’s brother in a gun shop in the neighborhood, and put on a
peep-sight, a thing never heard of before in that neighborhood. He took
the gun apart, leaded out the barrel, forged and finished the sight
and put it on the gun. His skill in handling tools astonished those
who watched him. Two days later, when the work was done, the doctor
and Lawrence went out to try the gun. They paced off twelve rods from
a maple tree which had a three-quarter-inch auger hole in it that
had been used for a sap spout. Lawrence did the shooting. His own
account of it is as follows: “The doctor tended target. Could find no
ball hole. Said I missed the tree. I fired again, no ball hole to be
found. Doctor came up to me and said I had spoiled his rifle. Before
my repairs he could kill a chicken every time at twelve rods. I said,
‘Uncle, I am very sorry, but I will make the gun all right before I
leave it.’ He said he could not consent to my doing anything more to
improve the shooting qualities--the sight he liked very much. I said
that as the gun was loaded I would take one more shot and see if I
could not hit the tree. After the third shot I went up to the tree to
investigate, and all of the three balls which I had fired were found in
the auger hole.”[185] The doctor was astonished, for he had never heard
of such shooting.
[185] Quoted from the full account given in Appendix A.
The next day he took Lawrence down to see N. Kendall & Company, who
were making guns at the Windsor prison. They hired him at once for two
years at $100 a year. His first work was stocking rifles by hand and
the first day he put on five stocks. The next day the superintendent
looked over the work and said it was well done, but it would never do
to rush the work as he had, for he would “soon gun-stock them out of
town,” and he “must take it more easy.” In the course of the next six
months, he had so far mastered every process in the factory, even that
of engraving in which he could soon compete with the oldest hands, that
he was put in charge of the shop. Four years later the company gave up
the gun business, and for a time Lawrence remained as foreman of the
carriage department in the prison shop.
In 1843 Kendall and Lawrence hired a small shop in Windsor village
and started a custom gun shop. In the winter of 1844 S. E. Robbins, a
business man, came to them and said that the Government was in the
market for 10,000 rifles. The matter was talked over, a partnership
formed, and a bid sent to Washington. In spite of the opposition of
nearly all the other Government contractors, who said they could never
do the work, it resulted in the award of a contract for 10,000 to
Robbins, Kendall & Lawrence, at $10.90 each, attachments extra, to be
furnished within three years.
They bought land, built a shop, and bought or made the necessary
machinery. It was in the performance of this and the subsequent
contract that many of the early machine tools were developed. The
contract was finished eighteen months ahead of time, at a good profit,
and they obtained a second contract for 15,000 at the same price.
Soon after finishing the first contract, Robbins and Lawrence bought
out Kendall’s interest in the firm, which became Robbins & Lawrence.
The business proved very profitable. About 38 per cent of their work
for the Government had to be rejected on account of poor material
and workmanship, but the California gold excitement was then at its
height and guns were in great demand. They were therefore able to sell
their second-quality work for the full government price. About 1850
they contracted with Courtland C. Palmer for 5000 Jennings rifles, a
gun which later developed through the Henry rifle into the present
well-known Winchester rifle.
About 1850 Robbins & Lawrence took the first of the steps which led to
their undoing. The railroad had just been completed through Windsor,
and S. F. Belknap, a large railroad contractor, induced them to start
in the car business, which, of course, had no rational relation with
their main activity of building guns. Mr. Belknap assured them that he
could control all the car work in that section, and put in $20,000 as
a silent partner. The firm went to a large outlay, but just as they
were finishing the first cars, Belknap quarreled with the president of
the railroad and the firm could not sell a single car when they had
expected to. After a considerable delay they were sold to other roads,
and stock which proved valueless was taken in payment. The operation
involved an actual loss of $134,000, which was later increased to
nearly $240,000.
[Illustration: FIGURE 38. ROBBINS & LAWRENCE ARMORY, WINDSOR, VT.
FROM AN OLD LITHOGRAPH]
In all of their gun work, Robbins & Lawrence used the interchangeable
system, and they contributed very largely to its development. Lawrence,
Howe, and later Stone, were constantly improving the methods of
manufacture. Fitch’s article on Interchangeable Manufacture in the
U. S. Census Report of 1880, describes and illustrates a profiling
machine built by Howe as early as 1848. The design shown there was used
for many years throughout all the gun shops in the country. He also
designed a barrel drilling and rifling machine, and he and Lawrence
designed and built a plain miller, which was the forerunner of the
well-known Lincoln miller. One of these millers, built in 1853, is
still running in the shop of the North Brothers Manufacturing Company
in Philadelphia. This machine had a rack-and-pinion feed for the
table, which chattered badly when starting a heavy cut. The principal
improvement which F. A. Pratt introduced in the Lincoln miller was the
substitution for this of a screw and nut. The original drawing of this
Robbins & Lawrence machine is still on file in the office of the Jones
& Lamson Machine Company and shows clearly that it furnished the basis
of the design of the Lincoln miller.
In 1851 Robbins & Lawrence sent to the Exposition in London a set
of rifles built on the interchangeable system, which excited great
interest and for which they received a medal. This led to the visit of
an English commission which resulted in a large contract to Robbins &
Lawrence for Enfield rifles, and for gun machinery which was installed
in the Armory at Enfield, near London. It has been said that this
contract caused the failure of Robbins & Lawrence. This is not true.
In 1852 the company contracted to make 5000 Sharps carbines at Windsor,
and 15,000 rifles and carbines at a plant which they were to erect in
Hartford. The Sharps Company advanced $40,000 to enable them to build a
new factory and Mr. Lawrence moved to Hartford in 1853 to superintend
the building and equipment of the plant. Shortly after it was
completed, Robbins & Lawrence, already strained by their losses in the
car-building venture and with the erecting of the new plant, undertook
a contract with Fox, Henderson & Company for 25,000 Minié rifles. They
were assured by the agent that he had in his pockets contracts for
300,000 more, which he promised them on the completion of the 25,000.
Lawrence objected strenuously to signing the contract for the 25,000
without more assurance as to the 300,000 to follow, as the outlay
for the work would greatly exceed the profits on the first contract.
It was signed, however, and it later developed that the agent had no
authorization for the 300,000. It was this which caused the failure of
Robbins & Lawrence.
Mr. Lawrence left the firm and took charge of the new Hartford plant
which had been bought by the Sharps Rifle Company. J. D. Alvord, one
of the contractors at Hartford under Lawrence, later built the Wheeler
& Wilson plant at Bridgeport. Robbins and others leased the Windsor
shops and began the manufacture of sewing machines. In 1859 the plant
and business were purchased by Lamson, Goodnow & Yale, who retained
Henry D. Stone as their mechanical expert. During the Civil War the
plant was given over entirely to the manufacture of army rifles, and
the sewing-machine business was sold to Mr. White of the White Sewing
Machine Company of Cleveland, Ohio.
In the early thirties Silas Lamson had begun manufacturing scythe
snaths in one of the hill towns of western Massachusetts. Up to that
time the farmers had either used straight poles or those which happened
naturally to have a convenient twist. Lamson conceived the idea of
steaming the poles and bending them to a predetermined curve. About
1840 his sons, Nathan and E. G. Lamson, moved to Shelburne Falls and
after some years began the manufacture of cutlery, founding the factory
which has been in successful operation ever since. After the completion
of the railroad through Windsor, they moved their snath factory to that
place. They and their successors, the Lamson & Goodnow Manufacturing
Company, continued this work there for many years. When the Robbins
& Lawrence property was put on the market it was purchased by E. G.
Lamson, A. F. Goodnow and B. B. Yale, under the name of Lamson, Goodnow
& Yale. E. G. Lamson & Company and the Windsor Manufacturing Company
succeeded this firm and continued the manufacture of machine tools and
Ball and Palmer carbines, and completed a number of government rifle
contracts. In 1869 R. L. Jones, a business man, of the Ascutney Mill
at Windsor, joined the firm, which became Jones, Lamson & Company, and
a small cotton mill was added to their other activities. Ten years
later the Jones & Lamson Company was organized to take over the machine
business. During all these changes Henry D. Stone continued as the
designer. A large poster of the Windsor Manufacturing Company, printed
some time about 1865, shows that they had plenty of irons in the fire,
for they were prepared to furnish guns and machinery for manufacturing
guns, sewing machines and needles, a standard line of hand-operated
turret lathes, plain and index millers, planers, trimming presses,
drill presses, sawmills, rock drills and mining machinery. Later their
mining and quarry-machinery business was moved to Claremont, N. H., and
became the Sullivan Machinery Company.
In 1889 the present Jones & Lamson Machine Company moved to
Springfield, Vt., where it now is. That same year, James Hartness
entered the employment of the company as superintendent. With his
advent the scattering of activities ceased and the Jones & Lamson
Machine Company began concentrating on turret lathes, which Robbins
& Lawrence and their various successors have been manufacturing
continuously since the early fifties. A number of the old mechanics and
foremen, who had homes in Windsor at the time the company was moving to
Springfield, took over the old shops and organized the present Windsor
Machine Company which now manufactures the Gridley Automatic Lathes.
This, briefly, is the history of the old Robbins & Lawrence shop. The
men, however, who worked with Robbins & Lawrence and its successors,
are of greater interest.
While Lawrence continued as master-armorer of the Sharps Rifle Works,
the company was successful financially. Fitch, in the Census article
frequently referred to, says that he brought with him “from Windsor the
first plain milling machine used in Hartford.” Lawrence also applied
the broaching process to the manufacture of Sharps rifles, effecting
great economies, and was the inventor of the split pulley which was
first made for him at Lincoln’s Phœnix Iron Works. In the winter of
1850 Lawrence introduced the practice of lubricating rifle bullets with
tallow, making possible the repeating rifle which had been a failure
up to that time as the barrel “leaded” and the gun lost its accuracy.
This was done in connection with some trials of the Jennings rifle
during the visit of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, who was in
this country for the supposed purpose of purchasing rifles.[186] Mr.
Lawrence left the Sharps company in 1872 and was for many years an
official in the city of Hartford, as Superintendent of Streets and on
the Water and Fire Boards. He died in 1892.
[186] See Appendix B.
The Sharps Rifle Works, after Lawrence’s retirement, were bought by
the Weed Sewing Machine Company, and later by the Pope Manufacturing
Company, who extended it greatly for the manufacture of the Columbia
bicycle.
Frederick W. Howe, the second of the Robbins & Lawrence mechanics
mentioned, whose portrait appears in Fig. 39, learned his trade in the
old Gay & Silver shop at North Chelmsford. We have seen in a previous
chapter the connection of this company, through Ira Gay, with the early
mechanics at Pawtucket. It is an interesting and perhaps significant
fact that both milling machines and turret lathes were in use in this
shop, probably at the time when Howe worked there. Howe was first
a draftsman and later superintendent at Windsor and was intimately
associated with the designing there at that time. The Jones & Lamson
Machine Company still have drawings of machine tools made by him as
early as 1848. As both Lawrence and Howe were designing in the Windsor
shop at that period, it is difficult today to apportion the credit
between them.
When Robbins & Lawrence failed, Howe went to Providence as
superintendent of the Providence Tool Company and his work there
contributed greatly to the success of that firm. While with both
Robbins & Lawrence and the Providence Tool Company, he worked on the
turret-head screw machine and the plain miller. The first screw
machine brought out by Brown & Sharpe in 1861 was built for Mr. Howe.
Joseph R. Brown added certain valuable features to it, but the parts
for the first machine were said to have been cast from Howe’s patterns.
Howe invented and built a universal milling machine,[187] but it should
not be confused with what is now known as the “universal” miller, which
was first built by Brown & Sharpe, also in 1861, for Mr. Howe to mill
the flutes in twist drills. The distinction between these two machines
has been pointed out by Mr. Burlingame. The No. 12 plain miller which
Brown & Sharpe build today was designed by Howe, and for many years was
known as the “Howe” type of miller. From 1868 to 1873 Mr. Howe was the
superintendent of Brown & Sharpe, and built the first building on their
present site. Later he started in business for himself as a consulting
mechanical engineer and was designing a typewriter (which was never
built) at the time of his death. He was a smooth-faced, well-dressed
man, with a restless inventive mind, apt to change things frequently,
improving each time, however, and when he finished anything it was
thoroughly done. He left a deep impress on mechanical development in
this country, and while Lawrence was perhaps the best mechanic, Howe
was probably the ablest of the three men connected with the early
Robbins & Lawrence history.
[187] Illustrated in the _American Machinist_ of August 13, 1914. See
also p. 208.
[Illustration: FIGURE 39. FREDERICK W. HOWE]
[Illustration: FIGURE 40. RICHARD S. LAWRENCE]
Henry D. Stone was born in 1815 and died at Windsor in 1898. He learned
his trade as a millwright at Woodstock, Vt., but soon afterward came
to Robbins & Lawrence. He remained with them and their successors
for the rest of his career, more than thirty years. He has been
very generally credited with the invention of the vertical turret
as applied to the lathe, but the idea was by no means original with
him. In 1845 a horizontal turret was designed and built by Stephen
Fitch at Middlefield, Conn., to manufacture percussion locks for
the United States Government. This machine is illustrated in the
_American Machinist_ of May 24, 1900. It had a horizontal axis with
eight positions for as many tools. In the same magazine for November
28, 1908, two turret lathes are illustrated and described, one with a
vertical and the other with a horizontal turret, both of which were in
use in the Gay & Silver shop at an early date, probably in the forties,
at the time Howe was there as an apprentice. The horizontal turret
principle was also in use by E. K. Root at the Colt Armory,[188] and J.
D. Alvord is said to have used a turret screw machine in the Hartford
plant in 1853. There is little doubt that both Howe and Lawrence had
something to do with the development of the turret lathe at Windsor.
The turret designs which Howe had built for him a few years later in
Providence are all along the same lines. Stone unquestionably had a
share in the development of the turret, for he made the drawing of the
first Robbins & Lawrence turret machines and continued for many years
the development of the turret lathe for the various companies which
successively operated in Windsor. With the turret screw machine came
the box-tool and hollow mill. _Machinery_ of May, 1912, illustrated and
described a box-tool, fitted with two back rests and two cutting tools,
which was made by Robbins & Lawrence at Windsor in 1850.
[188] See Fig. 33. See also the valuable article by E. G. Parkhurst
in the _American Machinist_, of May 24, 1900, p. 489, referred to
above.
The second period in the history of this company, or succession of
companies, begins with the coming of James Hartness to the Jones &
Lamson Machine Company in 1889. Mr. Hartness was born in Schenectady
in 1861 and learned his trade by “picking it up,” first with Younglove,
Massey & Company, of Cleveland, where his father was superintendent,
and then in the machine shop of the Union Steel Screw Works. In the
latter shop he first came in contact with close, accurate work. The
practice of this company was due to Jason A. Bidwell, who came from the
American Screw Company, in Providence, which we have referred to in a
previous chapter. Three years later Mr. Hartness went to the Lake Erie
Iron Works as tool maker. In 1882 he went to Winsted, Conn., as foreman
in the Thomson, Stacker Bolt Company, and in 1885 to the Union Hardware
Company of Torrington, manufacturers of gun implements, first as tool
maker, then foreman, and later as inventor. During the year 1888 he
worked for a few months at the Pratt & Whitney shop in Hartford,
at Scottdale, Pa., and with the Eaton, Cole & Burnham Company, in
Bridgeport. He went to the Jones & Lamson Machine Company in February,
1889, the year in which they moved to their present location at
Springfield, Vt. He was first superintendent until 1893, then manager
until 1900, and president from then on.
During these years Mr. Hartness has become one of the most influential
designers of machine tools of this generation and in 1914 he was
president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. When he
went to Windsor, the Jones & Lamson Machine Company was manufacturing
principally a standard type of high-turret lathe, lever-operated,
with power feed and back gears. Mr. Hartness immediately began an
investigation of the problem which resulted in the invention of the
Hartness flat-turret lathe and many improvements in the details of the
tools used on it. While Mr. Hartness was developing certain details
of the turret construction, he found in the records of the company
sketches of the identical mechanism, made by Howe nearly forty years
before, which show not only that Howe was engaged in turret-lathe
design but that he was a generation ahead of his time.
[Illustration: FIGURE 41. JAMES HARTNESS]
Under Mr. Hartness’ management, the Jones & Lamson Machine Company have
concentrated on a single design of machine which they have developed
to the utmost. Rather than be diverted from this single object, he
has, as new inventions have come up, helped others to develop them
independently. The result has been that while the Jones & Lamson
Machine Company, with one exception, has confined its attention to
flat-turret lathes, a number of important machines, which have sprung
from men connected with that company, are now being manufactured by
other firms.
The Fellows gear shaper is one of these machines. Mr. Fellows’ career
is a problem to those who are interested in the training of mechanics.
He was a window dresser in a dry goods store in Torrington and also
ran the carpet department. When Mr. Hartness came to Springfield, Mr.
Fellows, then twenty-two years old, came with him. Without any previous
mechanical training or technical education he worked for one week in
the shop, slotting screw heads, and then went into the drawing room.
He succeeded so well here that in a short time he was chief draftsman.
In 1896 he invented his gear shaper, the Fellows Gear Shaper Company
was organized, and has been in successful operation ever since. As the
theory underlying this invention is of a very refined order and the
problems involved in its manufacture have been worked out with great
skill, one would expect it to be the product of long experience and
high technical training. That Mr. Fellows should have brought out so
refined a machine within a few years from the time he first turned
his attention to mechanical matters is a remarkable tribute to his
qualities as a machine designer.
Mr. George O. Gridley is another mechanic who worked under Mr. Hartness
at Springfield. He developed the single- and later the multi-spindle
automatic lathes which are now manufactured by the Windsor Machine
Company in the new plant which has been built near the old Robbins &
Lawrence shop at Windsor. The original plant of the fifties is now used
as a club house for the men.
The Lo-Swing lathe, manufactured by the Fitchburg Machine Works at
Fitchburg, was invented by Mr. Hartness. The Fitchburg Machine Works
was founded in the early sixties by Sylvester C. Wright, who came from
the Putnam Machine Works. For many years they manufactured a general
line of machine tools, but they now confine their attention entirely to
the Lo-Swing lathe.
The Bryant chucking grinder, invented by William L. Bryant, is another
machine which has sprung from the Jones & Lamson shop of recent
years. It is manufactured by a separate company, the Bryant Chucking
Grinder Company, also at Springfield, Vt. The Fay automatic lathe,
now manufactured by Jones & Lamson Company, is the exception to their
policy of concentration on the flat turret. Like the Lo-Swing, it
is intended for work which cannot be done on the flat-turret lathe,
more particularly such pieces as are carried on mandrels. The cutting
tools are controlled by cams and a cam drum. Like the Lo-Swing, it is
intended to supplement the field of the turret lathe and to give the
advantage of multiple tools, constant setting, and automatic operation
for work which could not be put upon a turret machine.
We have followed the four main lines of influence from the old shop
at Windsor; one, through Lawrence, to Hartford; one, through Howe,
to Providence; one, through Stone and later Gridley, at Windsor; and
the fourth, through Hartness and the Jones & Lamson Machine Company
to Springfield. Another line of influence comes through Charles E.
Billings, who learned his trade under Robbins & Lawrence, went to the
Colt Armory, and as we have seen elsewhere, founded the Billings &
Spencer Company. Like Mr. Hartness, he also has been a president of
the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. There are other lines of
influence in Ohio, Pennsylvania and elsewhere which we cannot follow
out here.