THE BROWN & SHARPE MANUFACTURING COMPANY
Two companies, both in New England, have been conspicuous for their
leadership in tool building and the introduction of precision methods
in manufacture. One of them, the Pratt & Whitney Company, we have
considered. The other, the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, of
Providence, calls also for special notice.
It was founded in 1833 by David Brown and his son Joseph R. Brown.[189]
For nearly twenty years its business comprised the making and repairing
of clocks, watches and mathematical instruments, in a small shop
without power. Its influence was hardly more than local and only
fourteen persons were employed in 1853, when Lucian Sharpe was taken
into the partnership, and the firm became J. R. Brown & Sharpe.[190]
[189] David Brown retired in 1841. For the early history of David and
Joseph R. Brown see Van Slyck: “Representative Men of New England.”
[190] The writer would acknowledge his indebtedness to Mr. L. D.
Burlingame for much of the material in this chapter.
The real development of the business had begun a few years before. In
1850 J. R. Brown had invented and built a linear dividing engine which
was, so far as is known, the first automatic machine for graduating
rules used in the United States. It was fully automatic, adapted to
a wide variety of work, and provided with devices for correcting the
inaccuracies of the machine as built, and such as might develop on
account of wear. Various improvements were made in this machine within
the next few years and two more were built, one in 1854 and one in
1859, essentially like it. These three machines are in use today and
doing work which meets modern requirements of accuracy.
[Illustration: FIGURE 42. JOSEPH R. BROWN]
Soon after the first graduating machine was put into use, the vernier
caliper, reading to thousandths of an inch, was brought out by Mr.
Brown; the first was made as early as 1851. In the following year
he applied the vernier to protractors. A writer, in speaking of the
invention of the vernier caliper, says, “It was the first practical
tool for exact measurements which could be sold in any country at a
price within the reach of the ordinary machinist, and its importance in
the attainment of accuracy for fine work can hardly be overestimated.”
The introduction of the vernier caliper was slow, only four being made
in the first year. In 1852 Mr. Brown asked the New York agents to
return one which they had on exhibition because he needed it for some
fine work and did not have another in the shop. Within a year or two
the sales improved, for Mr. Sharpe wrote his agent at Newark, N. J., in
1854, that it could not be expected there would be a market for many
more tools in that neighborhood, as $500 worth had already been sold
there.
Mr. Brown did not have the market long, for in 1852 Samuel Darling also
invented and built a graduating engine and began the manufacture of
rules and squares at Bangor, Maine. Mr. Darling had been a farmer and
sawmill owner, with a strong bent for mechanics. He had gone to work
in a machine shop six years before and almost from the first had given
his attention to improvements in machinists’ tools. His first partner
was Edward H. Bailey, but after a year a new partnership was formed
with Michael Schwartz, a saw maker and hardware dealer of Bangor.
They soon became active competitors of J. R. Brown & Sharpe, and to
this day mechanics here and there have scales marked “D. & S., Bangor,
Me.” Competition between the two firms, both in prices and quality of
work, became so keen that a truce was called in 1866, resulting in
the formation of the partnership of Darling, Brown & Sharpe, which
conducted this part of the business until 1892, when Darling’s interest
was bought out. The entire business was soon after conducted under the
name The Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company, the original firm of J.
R. Brown & Sharpe having been incorporated under that name in 1868.
In the spring of 1868 Mr. Darling moved to Providence, bringing with
him his graduating engine, machinery and six of his most experienced
workmen. Darling’s engine was built along radically different lines
from Brown’s, an interesting feature being that many of its parts were
made of saw-stock, which he also used as the material for his scales
and squares. His machines and processes had been kept secret, and it
was not until after the partnership was formed that Mr. Brown had
opportunity of seeing them at Bangor. Mr. Darling’s original dividing
machine is also still running at the Brown & Sharpe works, having been
operated for over fifty years by John E. Hall, who remembers the time
when Mr. Darling first brought his new partners to see it.
Both J. R. Brown & Sharpe and Mr. Darling had had their standards
compared with those at Washington prior to the formation of the
partnership. Standards of a still higher degree of accuracy were
prepared about 1877, and the following is quoted from a letter to J. E.
Hilgard, of the Coast Survey Office, Washington, regarding the metric
standard in use by the Brown & Sharpe Manufacturing Company at that
time:
Taking 39.370 as the standard, there is only 0.00023 in. in the meter
difference in our comparison, which perhaps is as close as may be
expected. We shall now consider your comparison of our steel bar with
the standard at Washington as correct, and in our comparisons with it
shall be able to detect errors as small as 0.000025 in.
Still later and more accurate standards were made by Oscar J. Beale in
1893.[191]
[191] _American Machinist_, Vol. XXXVI, p. 1025.
The early business of J. R. Brown & Sharpe connected them closely with
the various standards then in use for measuring wire, sheet metal, and
the like. Mr. Sharpe was impressed with the irregularity and confusion
of these various gauges, so that after he became Mr. Brown’s partner,
he interested himself in the establishment of a more systematic
standard for wire gauges. In 1855 he corresponded with various people
in regard to gauges for clock springs. By January of 1856 the wire
gauge with a regular progression of sizes had been conceived, and a
month later a table of sizes was made. The new system was laid before
the Waterbury Brass Association by Mr. Sharpe, and in November of
that year fifty gauges were sent to William Brown, president of the
Association, for inspection by the members to show them the uniformity
in size which could be maintained in making a number of gauges.
The Association passed resolutions adopting this standard, and in
February, 1857, eight of the leading American manufacturers signed
these resolutions. The new gauge, introduced to the public through a
circular sent out in March of that year, became the standard, since
known as the American Wire Gauge.
The subject of accurate gearing came up in connection with the clock
business then conducted by J. R. Brown & Sharpe. There were also calls
for gears to be cut which were beyond the capacity of the machine
they then had for such work. This led to the design and building of a
precision gear cutter, not only to produce accurate gears, but also to
drill index plates and do circular graduating.
The second of the linear dividing engines, built in 1854, had a
graduated silver ring set into the dividing wheel. This ring was
graduated at the office of the Coast Survey in Washington by William
Wurdeman on a machine having an index wheel with 4320 graduations
copied from the plate of the Troughton & Simms machine in London. Mr.
Brown went to Washington to see the work done and was so well satisfied
with it that he arranged with Mr. Wurdeman to graduate the copper ring
used in the precision gear cutter which was built in 1855. Patrick
Harlow, who operated this machine from about 1860 to 1910, says that
it was Mr. Brown’s special pride, that it was given the honor and care
due a precision machine, was located in a room by itself and carefully
covered every night to protect it from injury. Long after it was
supplanted by automatic gear cutters, it was used for index drilling.
The formed milling cutter, which retains accurately the contour of its
cutting edge through successive sharpenings, was invented in 1864 by
J. R. Brown with special reference to the cutting of gear teeth. In
fact, the oldest milling cutter known was used for cutting gear teeth.
This cutter was made some time prior to 1782 by the French mechanic
Jacques de Vaucanson and came into the possession of the Brown &
Sharpe Manufacturing Company about 1895. The teeth are very fine and
apparently were cut with chisels. The hole in the center is octagonal
and seems to have been broached.
The formed cutters came as one of the important elements in the system
of interchangeable involute gears, introduced by Brown & Sharpe,
based on the principles of Professor Willis. While they used both
the involute and cycloidal systems, they threw the weight of their
influence toward the former and were a strong factor in the general
adoption of the involute form for cut gearing, as well as for the use
of diametral pitch, which, as we have seen, was suggested by Bodmer in
Manchester, England.
Early in the Civil War the Providence Tool Company took up the
manufacture of Springfield muskets for the Government. Frederick W.
Howe, who had become superintendent of that company after leaving
Robbins & Lawrence, had been designing turret machines for a number
of years, as we have seen. In order to equip the Tool Company for
this work, and especially for making the nipples, he went to J. R.
Brown & Sharpe and arranged with them to build a turret screw machine
for this purpose. The general design of this machine was similar to
those of Howe & Stone, and Mr. E. E. Lamson tells the writer that the
castings for it were made at the Jones & Lamson shop in Windsor. J. R.
Brown added the self-revolving turret, utilizing a ratchet and pawl
action on the return motion of the slide, the device for releasing,
feeding and gripping the bar-stock while in motion, and the reversing
die holder. While Brown was the first to adapt these features to the
Howe machine, the revolving feeding mechanism had been used before and
Pratt & Whitney had begun the manufacture of turret screw machines with
self-revolving heads that same year, 1861.[192]
[192] “Origin of the Turret,” _American Machinist_, May 24, 1900, p.
489.
This screw machine seems to have been the first machine tool built for
sale by the Brown & Sharpe Company. Various sizes of screw machines, of
both hand and automatic types, were built by them during and since the
Civil War. In the early eighties, S. L. Worsley developed for them the
complete automatic screw machine, many features of which are still in
use in the machines now being built.
At the opening of the war plain milling machines had been in use for
many years. The Lincoln miller had taken its present form and Howe
had designed a miller with a vertically adjustable cutter-slide and a
swiveling chuck which could be revolved, indexed and swiveled in two
planes and fed longitudinally under the cutter.[193] The statement by
Fitch in the “Report on the Manufacture of Interchangeable Mechanism”
in the United States Census, 1880, that the “universal miller” was
designed by Howe in 1852, is doubtless based on this machine or a
forerunner of it. The drawings of it, however, show a machine of
radically different design from what is now known as the “universal
miller,” which was invented by Joseph R. Brown in 1861-1862, at Howe’s
suggestion.
[193] Illustrated in the _American Machinist_, Aug. 13, 1914, pp.
296-297.
The Brown & Sharpe universal miller is indirectly connected with the
percussion nipple which brought about their first screw machine. The
hole in this piece was drilled by twist drills which the Providence
Tool Company were making for themselves. One day Howe came into the
shop and watched the workman filing the spiral grooves in tool-steel
wire with a rat-tail file. He decided that the method was too expensive
and consulted with Joseph R. Brown to find a better and more economical
way of making them.
[Illustration: FIGURE 43. FIRST UNIVERSAL MILLING MACHINE
1862]
Mr. Brown appreciated the need of a machine to do this work, especially
as he was just beginning to use such drills himself in the manufacture
of the Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machines. He set himself at once to the
task of developing a machine which would not only cut the grooves in
twist drills, but would be suitable for many kinds of spiral milling,
gear cutting, and other work which had up to that time required
expensive hand operations. Little time was lost, and the first machine
(Fig. 43) was built and sold to the Providence Tool Company, March 14,
1862. After passing through several hands it came back thirty years
later into the possession of its builders and is now preserved by them
for its historical interest. The first published account of the machine
appeared in the _Scientific American_, December 27, 1862. The limited
facilities of the shop were taxed to meet the demand created, and ten
machines were built and sold during the remainder of the year 1862,
most of the sales being in the eastern states. The first machine sold
in the west went to the Elgin National Watch Company, and the first one
sold abroad went to France.
Howe never claimed to be the inventor of this machine, and, in fact,
while still superintendent of the Providence Tool Company he wrote a
testimonial to J. R. Brown & Sharpe, in which he said, “I take great
pleasure in recommending _your_ celebrated universal millers.”
Howe was connected with the Brown & Sharpe Company from January 1,
1868, to about 1873. This is the last year that he appears in the
directory as being at their works. There was some form of partnership
by which he and Mr. McFarlane, the superintendent, had an interest in
the business so that his name does not occur in its list of employees.
The plain milling machine manufactured for years by Brown & Sharpe
is his design, and his work was partly that of special designing and
partly superintending the building of their new plant on the present
site. They moved into this in 1872 from their old wooden buildings. At
that time they employed from 150 to 200 men.
In the early sixties the company began the manufacture of the Wilcox
& Gibbs sewing machine, which they have manufactured ever since. They
used cylindrical and caliper gauges, including limit gauges, for
this work. In 1865 a set of standards was made for John Richards,
and cylindrical and limit gauges of various forms were regularly
manufactured during the early seventies. For a long time the basis
of accuracy for these was a set of Whitworth plugs and rings, which
are still preserved among their archives. The sizes above the 2 inch
are cast-iron, and commencing with the 2³⁄₄ inch they are hollow and
ribbed. These were looked upon with reverence by the Brown & Sharpe
workmen and were used as master gauges for the commercial plugs and
rings. They found, however, that in trying the Whitworth plugs, say
³⁄₄ inch and 1¹⁄₄ inch into a 2 inch ring and then other combinations
into the same ring, an appreciable variation in fit could be noticed.
This led to consideration of means for obtaining greater accuracy than
was possible with dependence on these Whitworth gauges. At the time
the question arose Richmond Viall had just become superintendent and
Oscar J. Beale was chief inspector. It was decided to make a measuring
machine which should be an original standard for measuring as well as
a comparator. This machine, built in 1878, was largely the work of Mr.
Beale. It has a measuring wheel graduated to read to ten-thousandths of
an inch and a vernier reading to hundred-thousandths. There is also an
adjustment which reads even finer than the famous “millionth dividing
engine” of Whitworth. The basis of accuracy for the microscopic scale
was a standard yard, which had been compared with the standards at
Washington.
The micrometer caliper was introduced by Brown & Sharpe in 1867.
Although not the pioneers in the sense of being the inventors, they
were the first to recognize the practical value of this tool for
machinists, and to put it on the market. As in the case of the vernier
caliper, the introduction of the micrometer caliper into everyday
shopwork marked an important step in raising the standard of accuracy.
The principle is very old. William Gascoigne, of Yorkshire, England,
used it about 1637, moving two parallel edges or pointers to and fro by
means of a screw provided with a divided head. For two hundred years
the principle has been used in controlling the movement of spider webs
and cross hairs in transits and other optical instruments. It is well
known that Watt had one (now in the South Kensington Museum in London),
and we have already mentioned the “Lord Chancellor,” used by Maudslay
before 1830. R. Hoe & Company, of New York, in 1858, had a bench
micrometer reading up to 9 inches. But none of these could ever have
influenced mechanical standards generally as did the strong, compact
little instrument developed by Brown & Sharpe.
The circumstances surrounding its introduction are as follows: In
1867 the Bridgeport Brass Company had a lot of sheet brass returned
to them from the Union Metallic Cartridge Company as “out of
gauge.” Investigation showed that the sheets were to the gauge of
the manufacturer, but that the gauge used by the customer did not
agree, and, further, when both gauges were tested by a third, no two
of them agreed. All three gauges were supposed to be the regular
U. S. Standard, adopted by the wire manufacturers in 1857, of the
well-known round, flat form, with slits for the various sizes cut in
the circumference. Gauges of this form were the best and most accurate
method then known for measuring sheet metal.
S. R. Wilmot, then superintendent of the Bridgeport Brass Company,
seeing that the difficulty was likely to occur again, devised the
micrometer shown at A in Fig. 44, and had six of them made by a skilled
machinist named Hiram Driggs, under the direction of A. D. Laws, who
was then in charge of the mechanical department of the Brass Company.
The reading of the thousandths of an inch was given by a pointer and
a spiral line of the same pitch as the screw, 40 to the inch, running
around the cylinder and crossed by a set of 25 lateral, parallel lines.
In the early part of 1867, the matter was taken up with J. R. Brown
& Sharpe with a view to having them manufacture the gauges, and the
one shown, A, Fig. 44, with Mr. Laws’ name stamped on it, is still in
their possession. As submitted, the tool was not considered to be of
commercial value, for the cylinder was completely covered with spiral
and straight lines intersecting each other so closely that it was
impossible to put any figures upon it, thus making it very difficult to
read.
In 1848 Jean Laurent Palmer, a skilled mechanic in Paris, patented a
“screw caliper,” shown at B, Fig. 44, and began manufacturing it under
the name of “Systeme Palmer.” In this micrometer the graduations were
divided, one set being on the cylinder of the frame and the other on
the revolving barrel, an arrangement which permitted all the markings
necessary for clearness. The importance of this tool does not seem to
have been appreciated until August, 1867, when J. R. Brown and Lucian
Sharpe saw one at the Paris Exposition. They at once recognized its
possibilities and brought one home with them. To use Mr. Sharpe’s own
words: “As a gauge was wanted for measuring sheet metal, we adopted
Palmer’s plan of division, and the Bridgeport man’s size of gauge,
adding the clamp for tightening the screw and the adjusting screw for
compensating the wear of end of points where the metal is measured, and
produced our ‘Pocket Sheet Metal Gauge.’... We should never have made
such a gauge as was shown us by the Bridgeport man in 1867, to sell on
our own account, as it would be too troublesome to read to be salable.
If we had not happened to find the Palmer gauge, and thereby found a
practical way to read thousandths of an inch, no gauges would have
been made. If we had never seen the Bridgeport device we should have
found the Palmer at Paris, and without doubt have made such gauges, but
possibly would have made a larger one first. The immediate reason of
making the ‘Pocket Sheet Metal Gauge’ was the suggestion coming from
the Bridgeport Brass Company of the want of a gauge of the size of the
sample shown us for the use of the brass trade.”[194]
[194] From a letter of Lucian Sharpe, quoted in the _American
Machinist_ of December 15, 1892, p. 10.
[Illustration:
A
B
C
D
FIGURE 44. EARLY MICROMETER CALIPERS
A--Wilmot’s Micrometer, 1867
B--Palmer Micrometer, brought from Paris by J. R. Brown and Lucian
Sharpe, 1867
C--“Pocket Sheet Metal Gauge,” Brown & Sharpe, 1868
D--One-inch Micrometer, Brown & Sharpe, 1877]
This gauge, shown at C, in Fig. 44, was put on the market in 1868,
and appeared in the catalog of 1869. Comparison of A, B, and C in
Fig. 44 shows clearly their close relationship. The term “micrometer”
caliper was first applied to the one-inch caliper (D, Fig. 44) which
was brought out and illustrated in the catalog of 1877. In _Machinery_
of June, 1915, Mr. L. D. Burlingame has given an admirable and
very complete account of the various improvements which have been
brought out since that time. In connection with the article, a modern
micrometer is shown and its various features, with the inventors of
each, are clearly indicated.[195]
[195] The origin and development of the present form of micrometer
is further discussed in _Machinery_, August, 1915, p. 999, and
September, 1915, pp. 11, 58.
The cylindrical grinder was first made as a crude grinding lathe in
the early sixties, and used for grinding the needle and foot bars of
the Wilcox & Gibbs sewing machines. In 1864 and 1865 the regular
manufacture of grinding lathes was begun by using parts of 14-inch
Putnam lathes modified to produce the automatic grinding lathes. These
modifications consisted in mounting a grinding wheel on the carriage,
providing an automatic feeding and reversing attachment, and included
the use of a dead center pulley. From 1868 until 1876 various plans
were worked out for a complete universal grinder, and by 1876 one had
been built and was exhibited at the Centennial Exposition. The first
one used at the factory was put into service a few days after Mr.
Brown’s death, which occurred July 23, 1876. The patent granted to Mr.
Brown’s heirs for this machine included not only the ordinary devices
of the universal grinder so well known today, but also provision for
form grinding. The designing of surface machines as well as many
other varieties followed, the work being done under the direction of
Charles H. Norton, who later had charge of the design of their grinding
machinery.
The manufacture of automatic gear cutters was commenced by the Brown &
Sharpe Manufacturing Company in 1877, two designs by Edward H. Parks,
a small manufacturing machine for bevel and spur gears and the larger
machine for general use, being brought out in that year.
In sixty years the Brown & Sharpe Company has grown from an obscure
local shop into a great plant employing thousands, but its influence
and its product represent a greater achievement. Many mechanics of
high ability have gone to other shops, among whom are Henry M. Leland,
president of the Cadillac Motor Car Company; J. T. Slocomb, Horace
Thurston, Elmer A. Beaman and George Smith, of Providence; Charles H.
Norton, of Worcester; John J. Grant, of Boston; William S. Davenport,
of New Bedford; A. J. Shaw, of the Shaw Electric Crane Company, and H.
K. LeBlond, of Cincinnati. Hundreds of others, however, as managers,
superintendents, chief draftsmen and tool makers, have perhaps done
more to spread throughout the country the methods and standards of
accuracy which have made American machine tools what they are.
Mr. Henry M. Leland, who was trained in the Providence shop, says:
The man who is responsible for this and who thoroughly demonstrated
his rare ability and wonderful persistency in bringing out the
accurate measuring tools and instruments, and the advanced types
of more efficient and unique machinery, was the founder, Joseph R.
Brown. I have often said that in my judgment Mr. Brown deserved
greater credit than any other man for developing and making possible
the great accuracy and the high efficiency of modern machine practice
and in making it possible to manufacture interchangeable parts,
because the Brown & Sharpe Company were the first people to place on
the market and to educate the mechanics of the country in the use of
the vernier caliper. They were also the first to make the micrometer
caliper.
I remember that in those early days people came to Brown & Sharpe
from all over the world to consult with Mr. Brown in reference
to obtaining great accuracy and securing difficult results which
had been deemed insurmountable by other high-grade mechanics. The
mechanical engineers are now searching the records for men who have
made themselves eminent in the industrial world as inventors and
manufacturers; for a list of men to have honorable mention and to
have their achievements and ability so recorded that the modern world
may bestow upon them the credit and gratitude which they so richly
deserve. Among these names I know of none who deserves a higher
place than, or who has done so much for the modern high standards of
American manufacturers of interchangeable parts as Joseph R. Brown.