Simeon North, John Hall, and Mechanized Manufacturing

Abstract

SIMEON NORTH, JOHN HALL, AND MECHANIZED MANUFACTURING To the Editor: Historians generally agree that Simeon North and John Hall were pivotal figures in the introduction of machine tools and the attainment of interchangeability in American manufacturing technology; many of them accept the corollary that interchangeability of parts in man­ ufactured mechanisms was achieved through the use of machine tools.1 However, in two recent articles—one in this journal and one in IA— I have shown that interchangeability in small arms was realized at the national armories through improved skills in the handwork of arti­ ficers rather than with the precision of machinery.2 I will show here that this also was true at the armories operated by Simeon North and John Hall. Historical Background Enthusiasm for the use of interchangeable parts in small arms orig­ inated among French engineers, scientists, and army officers in the late 18th century and was communicated to the U.S. Army by French officers serving in America.3 Their influence, along with the obvious need to establish some measure of standardization in the disparate collection of artillery held by the army, led Secretary of War James McHenry in 1798 to establish uniformity as a goal for new American cannon.'1 At this time, “uniformity” meant dimensional uniformity and, for small arms, was expressed as a requirement for interchange­ ability of component parts. The ideal desired was that parts taken from any weapon would fit into, and function properly in, any other weapon of the same model. (Later, the definition of uniformity would ‘Merritt Roe Smith, “John H. Hall, Simeon North, and the Milling Machine,’’ Tech­ nology and Culture 14 (October 1973): 573—91, and Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology (Ithaca, N.Y.. 1977), particularly chaps. 7 and 8; David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production (Baltimore, 1984), pp. 32—43. ^Robert B. Gordon, “Who Turned the Mechanical Ideal into Mechanical Reality?” Technology and Culture 29 (October 1988): 744 — 78, and “Material Evidence of the Man­ ufacturing Methods Used in Armory Practice,” IA: Journal oj the Society for Industrial Archeology 14, no. 1 (1988): 22 — 35. 3Hounshell, pp. 25 — 28; Merritt Roe Smith, ed., Military Enterprise and 'Technological Change (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), p. 46. ?E. C. Ezell, “ T he Development of Artillery for the United States Land Service before 1861” (M.A. thesis, University of Delaware, 1963). 179 180 Robert B. Gordon be broadened so as to include equivalence ot physical properties, such as strength and hardness, in addition to uniformity of dimensions.) An early attempt to introduce standardized small arms and inter­ changeable parts was made by Commissary-General Callender Irvine and in 1813 a contract with Simeon North for army pistols stipulated that the parts of the lock mechanisms be interchangeable. North had entered a career in manufacturing with the purchase of a sawmill on Spruce Brook in Berlin, Connecticut, which he converted to the man­ ufacture of scythes in 1795. He obtained a contract for pistols from the U.S. government in 1799 and, with a succession of contracts, specialized in small-arms manufacture with a hue division of labor. To accommodate his growing arms business, he acquired a water privilege on the Coginchaug River in Middletown, Connecticut, on which he erected a three-story factory, 86 by 36 feet. The factories of two of the other three contractors, Robert Johnson and Nathan Starr, who figure in the subsequent introduction of milling technology, were located within a lew miles of North's. By 1816 North’s factory, with its machinery and tools, was said to represent an investment of $100,000.·"’ North enlarged the scope of his business in 1823 by becoming one of the contractors for the M1817 flintlock rifle.1’ In 1828 North undertook to make the M1819 breech­ loading (Hall) rifle under a contract that explicitly required inter­ changeability with the rifles of the same pattern being made at Har­ pers Ferry.7 Important developments in the mechanization of manufacturing took place at North’s Middletown factory, as at other private armories and at John Hall’s Harpers Ferrv rifle works. M. R. Smith and Edwin Battison have brought forward documentarv evidence showing that...