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Title:	LATHE, DUPLICATING -  BLANCHARD LATHE
Maker/Manufacturer:
Date of Manufacture:	1822
Eminent Figure:	BLANCHARD, THOMAS
Catalog Number:	SPAR 5550
Measurements:	H:250.1CM W:

Object Description:

BLANCHARD LATHE
Manufactured by Springfield Armory, Springfield, Ma. in 1822 - Invented and built by Thomas Blanchard and used from 1822 until 1855 at the Springfield Armory.

Markings:


1909 Catalog # - "

Army # - "

Notes: "Blanchard, Thomas - Born in Sutton, Mass., June 24, 1788. Worked at Middlebury, where he invented a cam movement for the lathe that made possible the turning out of gun barrels of irregular form. Followed with a like invention for turning gunstocks, which was patented September 6, 1819 and improved under patent of January 20, 1820. Eight or ten of these machines were purchased by the British government at a total cost of $40,000. Blanchard entered Springfield Armory to assume charge of arms stocking, and soon thereafter invented a machine for mortising the various metal parts into the stock. Died in Boston, April 16, 1864, age seventy-five years, ten months." - Colonel Robert E. Gardner

"THOMAS BLANCHARD, THE INVENTOR. The expulsion of the Huguenots from France, while it gave a vital blow to the prosperity of that nation, causing the loss of vantage-ground never to be regained, proved, like the overflow of the Nile, a special blessing to every land the wandering exiles reached.
In founding American institutions, next, in importance to the English Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth, must be regarded the French Protestants, or Huguenots, as called in France, and while due honors have been paid to those distinguished in civil life, such as Faneuil, the donor of the 'Cradle of Liberty' bearing his name, Henry Laurens, first president of the National Congress, John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the United States, and many others, the services of those in the humbler walks of industrial life remain for the most part unwritten and unknown. To explore that field would exceed the limits of a magazine article, and the writer must confine himself to one of the Huguenot descent whose special genius for mechanics has rarely been surpassed. Other have made single inventions that have, perhaps, attracted more notice than any one of Blanchard's, but it may be questioned whether another can be named in the present century, either in this country or Europe, who has introduced so many labor-saving machines applicable to so great a variety of uses, and which have contributed so largely to the common necessities, utilities, and economies of life. This may seem extravagant, but it must be remembered that not an armory exists in this country, or probably in all Europe, where guns are made by motive power, not a carriage-wheel revolves on all our thoroughfares, hardly a human being in civilized life that wears boots and shoes, not a school where slates are used, hardly a carpet laid down, but owes tribute to the genius of Thomas Blanchard for producing articles better and cheaper. Even these are but a few of the uses that might be named. Indeed, there seems to be no limit to them. Latterly his inventions have been applied to carving, die-sinking, carriage-making, furniture, and even statuary. One can hardly go into a machine shop where motive power is used, that he will not find more or less of Blanchard's motions, or of his methods of bending timber.
In 1686, the year of the revocation of the Edict of Nates, a colonly of thirty Huguenot families came direct from Rochelle, France to Boston. Poor and destitute, they were given by Governor Dudley a tract of land in Oxford, Worcester County, Massachusetts, then a howling wilderness inhabited by Indians. After a residence of some twenty years, one of the families was massacred by the savages, and their house will all it contained, burned to the ground. Terror-stricken by this calamity, the infant colony, after a sorrowful and prayerful leave-taking of their church, their cemetery, and their homes, returned to sadness in Boston. Years later, after the Indians had been suppressed, they with others of their kin returned to this region of hallowed memories, and settled, some in Oxford and some in the neighboring town of Sutton, where to-day their descendants maydescended, and he was born in Sutton, June 24, 1788. His father, Samuel, was a respectable farmer, but no mechanic. Thomas was wholly misplaced. He had no taste for farming, and there was really nothing in all his district to suggest a mechanic motion, or excite his latent powers.
Blanchard was a born genius in mechanics, so that he seemed to comprehend its laws and motions by intuition. His faculties were largely concentrated in constructiveness, and while by no means deficient in others, in his youth he seemed so to strangers, from a perverse impediment of speech. This he overcame in after-years.
When he had arrived at the age of eighteen, his elder brother Stephen started in a bordering district in West Millbury, a factory with horse-power, to make tacks, and he appointed his unfortunate brother to a position of heading them in a vise, one by one. Once in a mechanic shop, his dormant genius began to wake up. Ere that youth had spent many months in this dull task, he had designed, constructed, and put in operation a machine that made tacks at one motion, faster than the flicking of a watch, and more finished than those made by hand. So perfect in design and construction, it was operated over twenty years, and experts who have seen it say no essential improvement has ever been made upon it. The neighbors could not at first be made to believe that that stammering youth ever invented it, but when they found he had hardly been out of the school district, they were constrained to give him the credit.
In the same town of Millbury, a few miles below his shop, on the Blackstone River, were extensive armory works, engaged in manufacturing guns for the United States. The proprietor was then intent upon improving on the English mode of making gun-barrels, which was to weld them by hand, and grind them down before a revolving stone. He had invented a process of welding them under trip-hammers by which the work was done better, quicker, and cheaper, and it was adopted at the national and other armories in this country and Europe. Finding that the grinding process left the barrels of unequal thickness around the calibre, and made them liable to explode, his next aim was to turn them in a lathe. In this he succeeded, by a lathe patented December 19, 1818, so far as the barrel was round, but to turn the irregular shape of the butt baffled all his efforts, and not his alone, but of all the most ingenious mechanics in all the armories, of which there were eight, two national, at Springfield and Harper's Ferry, and six private in United States service, for supplying the different States. Most of them succeeded in turning the barrel so far as it was round, but all failed in their attempts to turn the butt. It could only be reduced to shape by hand-filing, and that cost a dollar on each gun. The prices paid the contractors by the War Department were limited to the cost of making arms at the national armories, and the reason given was that as necessity is the mother of invention, they would be compelled to make labor-saving improvements to secure their profits, while the mechanics in those armories, being paid by the day, had no such motive.
The wisdom of this policy was abundantly verified, and the public of to-day are little aware how much they are indebted to the private armories for mechanic improvements. Guns were formerly made entirely by hand, and most iron-work was reduced to shape by hand-filing, which a large class of mechanics followed as a profession. It has now become nearly obsolete, the work being done by machinery. The contractors having labored a year or more in fruitless attempts to solve the problem of reducing the built by a machine, at length the proprietor of the armory works at Millbury, in sheer desperation, hearing of a budding genius in a border farming district, sent for him to come to his armory. When he came, he seemed a stranger to all present, diffident, had a stammering tongual, very simple, but wholly original cam motion, which upon being applied relieved the difficulty at once, and proved a perfect success. The proprietor was delighted, and turning to him said: 'Well, Thomas, I don't know what you won't do next. I would not be surprised if you turned a gun-stock!' naming that as the most impossible feat in mechanics he could conceive, it being neither round not straight in any part. Thomas began his peculiar whistle again, and then stammered, 'We-we-well, I'll t-try that.' Whereupon the workmen who had gathered round burst into a loud laugh at the absurdity of the idea. The germ of the stocking machine lay in that cam motion, and it was then and there, as he afterward said, that the idea of his world-renowned machine for working out irregular forms first flashed through his mind, although it required many months to elaborate it.
Blanchard was soon called to Springfield armory to adjust similar cam motions, and on return journey, when riding solitary and alone in his carriage, he suddenly exclaimed, like Archimedes of old, with great glee, 'I've got it! I've got it! I've got it!' Two men by the wayside overheard him, and one said to the other, 'I guess that man is crazy!'
He sold his tack machine for five thousand dollars - a mere trifle for its worth, but a great fortune to him then. He built a shop, filled it with tools, and kept himself locked in for about two years. At last he emerged, and brought to the armory at Millbury a miniature model of his stocking machine, and it oeprated so well that a full-sized working machine was decided upon. The aid of other mechanics was called in, and Blanchard's first eccentric lathe was built in Millbury. In the mean time the fame of it had reached Washington, and the Ordnance Department were desirous of having it launched into notice from the National Armory at Springfield. Blanchard, feeling a just pride in this recognition of his great invention, ordered it sent there. It remained long enough to build a new one, was then returned to Millbury, and set up in the armory, where it was continued in operation about twenty years.
When the news was first proclaimed from Springfield, of a machine running there which turned gun-stocks, it was generally discredited. But mechanics came flocking from far and near to see the mechanic phenomenon. Among others attracted were two members of the British Parliament, then travelling in the country. When they returned to England, they reported the wonderful invention of Blanchard, by which the Americans were getting greatly in advance of them in gun manufacture, and moved a resolution for the purchase of similar machines. A true John Bull member rose, and ridiculed them unmercifully for being so badly played upon by the cunning Yankees. 'The very idea of turning a gun-stock is absurd on the face of it, as all must know who ever saw one.' Finding the resolution would fail, the two members withdrew it, and moved for a committee to go to the United States Armory, and report upon the facts. The committee came over, examined the workings of the machine, and reported the facts to be as first stated. The doubting Thomas then rose, and said the Americans might have got up something to work their soft woods - pine and poplar - but it would never stand the test of 'our tough English oak and hickory.' Upon this doubting Thomas himself was chosen a committee to go over and examine. He was not to be imposed upon; he would expose this humbug. Selecting three rough stocks of the hardiest, toughness timber he could find, he went to Springfield armory incognito, brought his stocks to the stocking-room, and asked the overseer if would do him a favor of turning them. 'Certainly, sir. Take a seat.'
Without making the least alteration of the machine, he run the stocks through in a few minutes, and then went on with hiBefore he left the city he gave an order, in behalf of the British government, for this and the accompanying machines, some eight or ten, which amounted to forty thousand dollars. They were built at Chicopee, shipped to England, and have been running there from that day to this.
This public recognition of Blanchard's genius is an honor not often conferred by the British government on American mechanics.
Blanchard was soon requested by the War Department to take the whole supervision of stocking the guns in Springfield Armory. He proceeded to make contrivances for morticeing into the stock each part of the gun. To mortice in the lock by a machine, the old stockers declared, was impossible. The contrivance he made was a marvel of ingenuity, especially the cutter. This was mounted on a movable frame, would cut down and round in any direction, so that when the mortice was completed no kid glove could be fitted to the human hand so closely as was the lock to the stock. He had great difficulty in contriving this instrument until he observed the clean cut of a borer in an oak log. Splitting open the log, he examined the borer with a microscope, and thus obtained his design - or, rather a design of the Great Architect himself. A pious elder, upon first witnessing his machines, exclaimed, 'Thomas, you are inspired; God has inspired you.'
The uses now made of this contrivance in making impressions to any given model in die-sinking, etc., is legion.
His lathe was soon brought into requisition for shoe lasts, which were difficult to make by hand, seldom uniform in shape, and expensive. They are now made in millions by this lathe made perfectly, rights and lefts, and at trifling cost.
It was next applied to tackle blocks, spokes, ox-yokes, and so on, for all irregular forms ad infinitum, from that day to this. Its latest application is the pantograph recently introduced into London for reproducing the celebrated statues in the British Museum, and regarded as a new marvel.
Blanchard performed the same feat at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, in 1857, to which he carried one of his lathes. He obtained plaster casts of Napoleon, Eugenie Thiers, and other notabilities, and so contrived the lathe it would turn and so contrived the lathe it would turn out marble busts of life-size, or any size, down to miniatures. Nothing in the Exposition excited more surprise. Sculptors especially were greatly excited, fearing their vocation was gone, and they supplanted by a machine.
M. Coquerel, chairman of the Board of Judges, in his report made prominent mention of this lathe, and it concluded in these words: 'This wonderful machine was invented by a Frenchman, named Blanchard, who is now living in America!'
For this great invention, whose worth to this country and Europe can only be computed in millions, Blanchard himself received but a meagre compensation. For the first two terms of his patent he was continually harassed by infringements and lawsuits; and even in the few years while busy at the armory more than fifty violators had pirated his invention, and started up lathes in various parts of the country for making lasts, spokes, etc.
Combined and repeated efforts were made to break down his patent. Eminent counsel were employed, and all Europe scoured, to find some evidence of a similar motion. But in no age, in no country, could a trace be found of a revolving cutter working to any given model like Blanchard's.
In the lower courts, before juries, he sometimes, though rarely, lost a case; but in the final appeal to the highest court at Washington he always prevailed, so that his claim to originality is now founded on a rock which naught can move.
Beaten in court, the last-makers retreated to the foreshen they found these busts and been wrought out by a machine, and were more exactly like the originals than any human hand could make them. It produced a sensation. They all supposed it a new invention. Blanchard said, 'No, not a new invention, but a new application of an old one of mine, from which I have never realized much, and I want the pattern renewed.' A resolution was introduced into the Senate by Webster to renew it for a term of years - some proposed for life - and it was rushed through without dealy. Choate, who had been retained as opposing counsel, wittily remarked, 'Blanchard has 'turned the heads' of Congress, and gained his point.'
Having mastered the job of stocking guns wholly by machinery, he left the armory, and devoted himself to other projects which his mind was teeming.
He invented a new construction of steamboats to tide over rapids and shallow waters, by means of which our Western Rivers were made navigable hundreds of miles further up, and thus a great national advantage obtained. When he had completed this and other new designs he removed to Boston, purchased a house, and there spent his remaining days. But his genius was not idle; it was always on the alert for some new discovery. Having noticed the great difficulty of ship-builders in obtaining timber gown to the right angle for knees of vessels, he devised a process to bend it to any angle required. It was no new thing to steam and bend small timber; but by the old process the fibres of the wood on the outer circle were so broken as to greatly weaken the timber. The point to be gained was to have the timber retain its full strength after being bent. This he attained so perfectly he could bend a shingle to a right angle, and leave it (so says an eye-witness) as strong at the angle as in any part.
A dealer in school slates in Philadelphia, hearing of this improvement, came to Boston, and presenting to Blanchard an old-fashioned square slate, asked him if he could not contrive a frame that would not tumble to pieces whenever let fall. Blanchard took the slate, clipped off the corners, reducing it to a perfect oval, then steamed and bent round an oak strip fastened by an iron loop. The slate-maker, after letting it fall repeatedly, and finding it uninjured, inquired his price. He replied, 'Two thousand dollars.' The former was greatly surprised that for a thing so simple he should charge so much and offered five hundred. Blanchard then proposed to accept for a term of years to which the slate-maker readily assented. He returned to Philadelphia, made slates after the new model, and as fast as they struck the school-house they struck the fancy of every scholar in it, and he could hardly fill his orders. The amount he paid Blanchard exceeded two thousand dollars the first year.
Blanchard introduced a mode of making the handles of shovels by steam-bending, which saved just one-half the timber and made a far more durable handle.
Like eccentric turning, this improvement has been utilized in a numberless variety of ways, being applied to armchairs, thills, wheel fellies, formerly made in four sections, now on one straiThough not so important an invention as the former, Blanchard realized more from it. The right for ship-building alone he sold for $150,000. It will be seen from facts already presented that the eccentric lathe proved to be far more than the invention of a simple machine for a single purpose, like the reaper, the revolver, the sewing-machine, etc.; it had a general and unlimited application. It was really a discovery of a new principle in mechanics, whereby the machine is made the obedient, faithful servant of man, to work out his designs after any given model, be it round or square, straight or crooked, however irregular, and reproduce the original form exactly every time.
All the work done by Blanchard's machines had perfect uniformity, and after their introduction into the national armories they led to an entirely new system of manufacture called the 'uniformity system.' Hitherto guns had been made separately, like Swiss watches with the parts all carefully lettered or numbered. This was the method in all our workshops, even to the bolts of a carriage or a common bedstead, and woe to him who misplaced one. The new system and its advantages will be best explained by its adaptation to watches. In the first place, the most perfect watch that could be made was obtained for a model, separate machines were filled up to make each and every part exactly like the model; these were operated by girls and boys, who turned out the parts by thousands. The parts were assembled into watches by experts, and the whole expense of each, aside from jewels and cases, did not exceed four dollars.
This system has since been adopted by the several watch companies and the production of American watches probably equals one thousand per day. As time-keepers they have proved to be superior to those by hand. This the public were slow to believe. It has long been a common belief that on such nice, delicate work, the hand was superior to the machine, and formerly it was well founded. But such has been the mighty advance in mechanic arts of late years that in many operations too numerous to mention no human hand can compete with the machine in rapidity of work, in perfect uniformity, nor in infinitesimal nicety. As evidences of the first two points, we need cite only the sewing-machine, although a great number might be named; for the third, we point to the machine engraving on bank-notes and watch cases, and also the micrometer gauge. This instrument will readily draw on a metallic plate, say one inch square, 100,000 lines, all perfectly straight parallel, and equidistant. A good engraver might, perhaps, in time, draw 100 such lines, but where is the hand that could draw 100,000 or approach it!
The wonderful results of the uniformity system in one branch of industry, before described, furnish a fair specimen of what it has done in others. Indeed, it has revolutionized mechanic processes in all our large workshops, so that component parts are no longer wrought out in detail, but turned out by wholesale. It has also greatly improved as well as cheapened mechanic products in an endless variety. It has broken down several large industries in Europe, and to save them from annihilation, the American system is fast being adopted.
Having produced a marked advance along the whole line of mechanic arts, this system forms an epoch in progressive mechanics, the greatest probably since the introduction of steam-power. It becomes, therefore, a matter of historical interest to establish the facts, when, where, and by whom did this system originate?
In 1874 General Wade, United States Army, filed in the War Department a paper (No. 25, Ordnance Notes) in which he says: 'Hall's rifles were manufactured at Harper's Ferry under the supervision of the inventor, who introduced the system of making all the parts interchangeable' ('parts interchangeable; and 'uniformity system' are synonymous terms).
'A board was appointed to examine and report upon this branch of the subject. I prepared a full report to the Secretary ofThe Ordnance Office soon after issued special orders to all the armories in the United States service to adopt and pursue this system throughout all the component parts of the gun. Thence the system was communicated to various mechanic works, and the advantages were so obvious it spread rapidly, and has continued to spread, until it has become well-nigh universal in all large establishments. General Wade's statement can be corroborated by many witnesses now or formerly connected with the armories.
Blanchard patent is dated September 6, 1819, and he introduced his machines at Harper's Ferry about 1822-23. All the work wrought out by them had perfect uniformity; none of the other had. Hall was an eminent mechanic, and he naturally strove to bring all the work on his favorite rifle up to the same standard of perfection. To do so, and establish the system of uniformity, Blanchard's contrivances were indispensable then - they are so now.
An expert of long experience in patent cases writes: 'It would be difficult, and, so far as I know, entirely impractical, to make small-arms, such as rifles, pistols, etc., to have their parts interchange, without Blanchard's inventions, and this view is corroborated by the fact that they are found in every establishment where such arms are made. For some of his contrivances, such as morticeing in the locks, no substitutes have ever been found, and now, after a lapse of half a century, among the great inventions of the day, his hold their place, for the most part unobscured and unimproved.'
It appears, therefore, to be clearly established that Blanchard was the forerunner of the present uniformity system; that it was in a measure an outgrowth of his inventions, and that Hall was the first to perfect and carry it into practical operation, and probably to conceive of it as now practiced.
In his later years Blanchard was much sought after as an expert in patent cases, for which his initutitive sense of mechanic principles fitted him. By means of books, social intercourse in courts and elsewhere, his other faculties became developed, his speech impediment was conquered, and he finally attained a good degree of culture and expansion of mind.
He died in Boston, April 16, 1864, aged seventy-six years." - Asa H. Water, HARPER'S, Volume 63, Issue 374, July 1881

"THOMAS BLANCHARD - Thomas Blanchard, the inventor of this wonderful machine was born in Sutton, Worcester County, Mass., June 24, 1788. His ancestors of mixed French and English blood, were among the first settlers in the vicinity.
How large a family his father had, we do not know, but of his six sons, Thomas was the fifth. This boy's talent for building and contriving was manifest almost from his cradle.
...One afternoon, while a journeyman stood watching a machine at work, he said to his shop-mate, 'Well, Blanchard can't take my job away from me - I'm turning gun-stocks.' Blanchard overheard this remark and muttered to himself, 'I'm not so sure of that. I'll thin it over.'
...While manifold schemes of this machine were floating just below the level of his conscious thought, he was driving homeward through Brimfield, 30 miles from Sutton. In an instant there appeared to his imagination a hinged carriage to hold a feeding wheel, and opposite it a cutter, or carving wheel. He cried, 'I've got it'. Two passers-by heard this remark, and one of them said, 'That man is crazy'. Within a month, Blanchard built a lather which carved a neat gunstock.
...While at Washington, securing a patent, Blanchard exhibited his machine at the War Department. One of the company was an admiral, who inquired, 'Can you turn a 74 frigate?' 'Yes', replied the inventor, 'if youBlanchard next entered the service of the United States Armory at Springfield, Mass., where he erected in 1822, a large lathe, which carved two gunstocks an hour. Its successor, which is much smaller and neat will carve six times as fast. The United States Armories at Springfield and Harpers' Ferry paid him a royalty of 9 cents for every gunstock carved on his lathe.
...In 1825, Blanchard built at Springfield a steam vehicle, which sped along its highways at a rattling pace. He also put into operation a line of steamships between Hartford and Springfield. The design of several of these ships was original with him...one of them operated at a steam pressure of 500 pounds per square inch.
Blanchard's income from his patents was now ample, and he removed to Boston, where he died April 16, 1864, age 76." - George Iles, "Leading American Inventors."

"During the Armory's earlier years it was noted, as always, for its concentration of fine craftsmen and engineers. Among them was Thomas Blanchard. Blanchard was credited with introducing as astonishing thirteen machines designed especially for the improvement of manufacturing muskets. One of the thirteen was said to have been based on his observations of a borer-worm in a oak log. His major contribution came in 1819, with the invention of the lathe for turning gun-stocks. The Blanchard lathe, as it became known, was said to be one of the ten greatest inventions. The lathe, an example of which is at the Armory Museum, could turn out irregular shapes from patterns. The lathe's basic design principles are still followed today in many machine tools. Its creation later played a great part in the development of interchangeable parts. During the Civil War the machine allowed the production of 450 gun stocks in a a ten hour period, previously each stock would take one man ten hours to produce." - Thomas A. Moore & William P. Goss, THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY: A NATIONAL HISTORIC MECHANICAL ENGINEERING LANDMARK

"Some economic historians see the Springfield Armory as the American origin of factory production of standardized, high-precision metal goods. Other American industrial products, such as textile machinery and clocks, emerged on a large scale by the period of Armory florescence beginning c1815, but Springfield's manufacture of uniform small arms was probably unprecedented before 1860 for the scale and complexity of manufacturing organization. Several major features characterize the factory production system:
- division of labor around a rationalized progression of tabs;
- organized production with centralized, close supervision that controls the flow of materials, supplies the tools, and sets the schedules for work throughout the entire organization;
- centralized control of the quality of work, permitting the manufacture of a uniform product and the payment of piece rates to artificers.
...On the other hand, we find a much higher level of inventive activity at the smaller, private plants. The areas around Millbury, Massachusetts (point of origin for new forging technology and irregular turning), and Middletown, Connecticut (first interchangeable manufacture, milling machinery), were particularly prolific sources of new manufacturing technology. These plants may have been less encumbered by bureaucratic requirements than the federal armories, although armory superintendents had great latitude in selection and application of new methods. Even when innovations originated at Springfield, they were sometimes created by individuals, such as Thomas Blanchard and John Garand, working largely independently of the Armory organization.
...The only prominent employee designers of production machinery at Springfield in the 19th century seen to have been Thomas Warner and Cyrus Buckland. Warner in 1834 developed a machine for milling the flat surfaces of lock plates. Buckland's importance is shown by Ames stipulation in 1854 that the Ames Manufacturing Company could not undertake to make stocking machines for the Enfield Armory ordered by British CommissionersMost of the new machinery adopted by the Armory was first developed by entrepreneurs in the private sector. Before the Civil War, such borrowings included, for example, trip hammers for barrel welding (adopted in 1815 and originated by Waters), the barrel turning lathe (1818, Springfield Manufacturing Company), stock lathe (1820, Blanchard), plain milling (1834, armories in Middletown), milling curved surfaces (1835, Robbins & Flagg), profiling (1848, Howe at Robbins & Lawrence), and barrel rolling (1859, England). During the magazine rifle era at Springfield (1892-1918), the Armory continued to buy new machines for such tasks as barrel drilling and rifling from the Pratt & Whitney Company. Use of commercial technology accelerated greatly at Springfield after World War I. While tooling up for production of the M1 rifle, the Armory greatly extended the use of broaching technology. By this time, Armory technical efforts were dwarfed by those of other American industries." - Raber, et al.

References:
Cooper, Carolyn C. SHAPING INVENTION, THOMAS BLANCHARD'S MACHINERY AND PATENT MANAGEMENT IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY AMERICA. Columbia University. N.Y., N.Y. 1991.
Gardner, Colonel Robert E. SMALL ARMS MAKERS. Crown Publishers, Inc. N.Y., N.Y. 1963.
Hawke, David Freeman. NUTS & BOLTS OF THE PAST: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN TECHNOLOGY 1776-1860. Harper & Row, Publishers. N.Y., N.Y. 1988.
Raber, Michael S., Patrick M. Malone, Robert B. Gordon, Carolyn C. Cooper. CONSERVATIVE INNOVATORS AND MILITARY SMALL ARMS: AN INDUSTRIAL HISTORY OF THE SPRINGFIELD ARMORY, 1794-1968. Raber Associates. South Glastonbury, Ct. 1989.