The Dawn of Innovation (52 page)

4
The discussion here follows Robert B. Gordon, “Who Turned the Mechanical Ideal into Mechanical Reality?”
Technology and Culture
29, no. 14 (October 1988): 774–778.

5
The
locus classicus
for the anti-Whitney argument is Robert S. Woodbury, “The Legend of Eli Whitney and Interchangeable Parts,”
Technology and Culture
1, no. 3 (Summer 1960): 235–253. The traditional accounts are Jeannette Mirsky and Allan Nevins,
The World of Eli Whitney
(New York: Macmillan, 1954), and Constance McLaughlin Green,
Eli Whitney and the Birth of American Technology
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1956). The best assessment of Whitney's current standing among historians is Carolyn C. Cooper, “Myth, Rumor, and History: The Yankee Whittling Boy as Hero and Villain,”
Technology and Culture
44, no. 1 (January 2003): 82–96.

6
Cooper, “Myth,” 44.

7
Whitney to Stebbins, November 27, 1798, in Whitney Correspondence, Yale University (hereafter WC).

8
Whitney to Wolcott, May 15, 1798, in WC.

9
Wolcott to Whitney, May 16, 1798, in WC; Whitney to Wolcott, June 2, 1798, in WC; Woodbury, “Legend,” 240.

10
Wolcott to Whitney, May 16, 1798, in WC; Francis to Wolcott, June 7, 1798, in WC.

11
Whitney to Stebbins, November 27, 1798, in WC.

12
Whitney to Wolcott, July 30, 1799, in WC.

13
Mirsky and Nevins,
World of Eli Whitney
, 209.

14
Cooper, “Myth,” 90.

15
Denison Olmsted,
Memoir of Eli Whitney
(New Haven, CT: Durrie & Peck, 1846), 50. This is a reprint of an 1832 article from the
American Journal of Science
. Also see Blake,
History of the Town of Hamden
, 125, and Joseph Wickham Roe,
English and American Toolmakers
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1916), 133. Cooper, “Myth,” 87–93, is very good on all of this. I mildly disagree with her to the degree that she implies it is inconsistent to see Whitney as both a charlatan and a highly competent manufacturer.

16
Wadsworth to Wolcott, December 24, 1800, in WC.

17
Mirsky and Nevins,
World of Eli Whitney
, 214.

18
Whitney to Wolcott, May 31, 1799, in WC.

19
Mirsky and Nevins,
World of Eli Whitney
, 154–55, Green,
Eli Whitney
, 133.

20
Carl P. Russell,
Guns on the Early Frontiers: A History of Firearms from Colonial Times Through the Years of the Western Fur Trade
(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1957), 158–159.

21
Author's email correspondence with Richard Barbuto, June 2010.

22
In 1808, Whitney contracted to provide the New York militia with 2,000 muskets, probably delivered in late 1810. Another 2,000 were contracted for in 1812 (Mirsky and Nevins,
World of Eli Whitney
, 236, 246). Whitney's correspondence states that all of the second tranche had been delivered by 1813 (Whitney to Irvine, November 18, 1813, in WC). The final 1,000 were delivered in September 1814, after Tompkins's intervention
(Tompkins to Lewis [a militia major general], September 3, 1814, in WC). Whitney always referred to his New York muskets as his contract standard, e.g., Contract between Eustis and Whitney, July 18, 1812, in WC.

23
S. N. D. North and Ralph H. North,
Simeon North: First Official Pistol Maker
(Concord, NH: Rumford Press, 1913); Robert D. Jeska,
Early Simeon North Pistol Correspondence with Comments by Robert Jeska
(privately published, 1993). Unless otherwise indicated, I use the North and North book for personal information and Jeska for the pistol contracts. Jeska distributed several hundred copies of the book; I purchased one of the last available new copies from his widow. The book is available in major research libraries. His pistol collection was auctioned after his death at an auction house in San Francisco. He is described as a “noted collector,” and the auctioned items included: “flintlock pistols, many by Simeon North, William Evans and Henry Deringer.”

24
Jeska,
North Pistol Correspondence
, 10–13. Jeska's original question was why the pistols are stamped “S. North & E. Cheney” even though Cheney's name doesn't appear on any of the payment or surety documents. Elisha Cheney, married to North's sister, was a clockmaker, the son of Benjamin Cheney, Eli Terry's first master. He did supply screws and other small parts for some of North's guns, but that normally wouldn't warrant a name stamp. The contract was first awarded to Voight, a clockmaker who had worked with the inventor John Fitch on his famous steam engines. Fitch, also a clockmaker, had apprenticed with Benjamin Cheney at the same time as Elisha, so they must have been well acquainted. The mint had been slated to close in 1799, presumably prompting Voight's bid for the pistol job, and he must have changed his mind when the mint received a reprieve. (He worked at the mint until 1814.) His friend Fitch may have introduced him to Cheney and North, or he may have already known Cheney. Near-clinching evidence for a contract sale is that the payment to Voight was made by the government and the amount expressly offset against North's contract award.

25
Jeska,
Early Simeon North
, 43.

26
Ibid., 59–62.

27
Ibid., 66.

28
Ibid., 86, 74.

29
The Irvine-Whitney dispute occupies a substantial portion of Whitney's 1813 and 1814 correspondence. The essence of it is in Irvine to Armstrong (the secretary of war), April 5, 1813; Whitney to Irvine, November 4, 1813; Irvine to Whitney, November 7, 1813; Whitney to Irvine, April 25, 1814; Irvine to Armstrong, May 9, 1814; Whitney to Armstrong, May 10(?), 1814, in WC.

30
Jeska,
Early Simeon North
, 146.

31
Ibid., 187; 159–160; 204–205. The letter to naval procurement, dated May 10, 1816, is addressed to the Board of Naval Commissioners and states that “I have now on hand about 14 hundred pistols of superior quality that I made for the War Department all of the size and dimensions of the one I left at the Navy office in Jany. last. The barrels have all been proved and inspected by an officer appointed on the part of the Government, and the locks are all made so uniformly alike that each of the respective locks may be fitted to the whole number.” Recall that North's barrels were proved in large quantities as they were made, but he had never had an inspection of the finished pistols.

32
Jeska speculates that North was under pressure by Hartford-Convention federalists not to support the war effort, for Connecticut was the heart of the pro-British party. But Nathan Starr and other military contractors in the area were active at the same time, and in any case, selling weapons to militias was about as anti-British as selling them to regulars.

33
Felicia Johnson Deyrup,
Arms Makers of the Connecticut Valley
, Smith College Studies in History, vol. 33 (Northampton, MA: Department of History, Smith College, 1948), 62.

34
Robert B. Gordon, “Simeon North, John Hall, and Mechanized Manufacturing,” Letters to the Editor,
Technology and Culture
30, no. 1 (1989): 179–188, at 182.

35
Gary Boyd Roberts,
Genealogies of Connecticut Families
(Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing, 1983); Nancy Simons Peterson, “Guarded Pasts: The Lives and Offspring of Colonel George and Clara (Baldwin) Bomford,”
National Genealogical Society Quarterly
86 (December 1998): 283–305; “Joseph Gardner Swift,” West Point Association of Graduates,
www.westpointaog.org
.

36
Cummings to Superintendent of all Stores, March 11, 1812, in “Letters Received,” US War Department, Office of the Chief of the Ordnance Department, Library of Congress (hereafter OCO); Eustis to Wadsworth, August 30 and 31, 1812, in OCO; Arthur to Wadsworth, June 14, 1813, in OCO; Bomford to Wadsworth, August 4, 1813, in OCO; Freeman to Wadsworth, March 4, 1813, in OCO; Bealle to Wadsworth, August 11, 1812, and January 2, 1813, in OCO.

37
Bomford to Wadsworth, August 8, 1812, in OCO.

38
Bomford to Wadsworth, March 6, June 6, and June 11, 1813; March 15, 1814; April 14, 1813; April 28, 1813; June 10, 1813; July 6, 1813, in OCO.

39
Bomford to Wadsworth, June 22 and August 22, 1814, in OCO.

40
Bealle to Wadsworth, August 11, 1812; January 2, 1813, in OCO.

41
The role of Ordnance and the Springfield Armory in driving American manufacturing technology has been a favorite topic of industrial historians. Raber et al.,
Conservative Innovators
, is the most complete and judicious analysis by senior scholars in the field. The report is available but difficult to track down; it should be published and sold through the Government Printing Office. Other important studies include Merritt Roe Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory and the New Technology: The Challenge of Change
(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977); and “Army Ordnance and the ‘American System' of Manufacturing,” in
Military Enterprise and Technological Change: Perspectives on the American Experience
, Merritt Roe Smith, ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1985), 39–86; Gene Silvero Cesari, “American Arms-Making Machine Tool Development 1798–1855” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1970); and the seminal Deyrup,
Arms Makers
.

42
Lee to Wadsworth, March 7, 1813, and March 28, 1814, in OCO; William Lee,
John Leigh of Agawam [Ipswich] Massachusetts, 1634–1671 and His Descendants in the Name of Lee
(Albany, NY: J. Munsell Sons, 1893); Henry F. Waters, ed.,
New England Historical and Genealogical Reporter
, vol. 30 (Boston: New England Historical and Genealogical Society, 1876).

43
Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 53–56.

44
For more information about the footnote on page 137, see “Contract Between the United States and Simeon North,” April 16, 1813, in WC.

45
Raber et al.,
Conservative Innovators
, 136, 147.

46
Dumas Malone,
Jefferson and His Time
, vol. 2:
Jefferson and the Rights of Man
(Boston: Little, Brown, 1951), 25–26; “Contract Between the United States and Simeon North,” April 16, 1813, in WC.

47
Quoted in David A. Hounshell,
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932
(Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 35; and see, e.g., Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 192–195, 220.

48
David A. Hounshell,
From the American System to Mass Production, 1800–1932
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984), 35; and see, e.g., Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 192–195, 220; Deyrup,
Arms Makers
, 88.

49
Major James Dalliba, “The Armory at Springfield,” October 1819,
American State Papers, Military Affairs, II
, 541–553, at 543–544.

50
Carolyn C. Cooper,
Shaping Invention: Thomas Blanchard's Machinery and Patent Management in the Nineteenth Century
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), is the best single source on Blanchard. Except as noted below, the narrative in this section follows Cooper. The original source is Asa H. Waters,
Biographical Sketch of Thomas Blanchard and His Inventions
(Worcester, MA: L. P. Goddard, 1878). Waters knew Blanchard, and the pamphlet was written as a eulogy after Blanchard's death.

51
For more information about the footnote on page 139, see Deyrup, Arms Makers, 95.

52
Waters,
Thomas Blanchard
, 5–7.

53
Lee to Blanchard, November 18, 1818, in Correspondence, Springfield Armory Archive, Waltham, MA (hereafter SAA).

54
Blanchard to Lee, March 18, 1820, in SAA.

55
Waters,
Thomas Blanchard
, 6.

56
Ibid.

57
Blanchard to Lee, February 2, 1819, in SAA.

58
Blanchard to Lee, June 9, 1819, in SAA; Lee to Blanchard, June 14 and June 18, 1819, in SAA; Kenney to Lee, June 11, 1819, in SAA; Blanchard to Lee, July 3, 1819, in SAA; Lee to Thornton, August 17, 1819, in SAA.

59
Blanchard to Lee, June 9, 1819, in SAA.

60
Blanchard to Lee, September 28 and October 7, 1820, in SAA; Lee to Blanchard, October 2 and October 14, 1820, in SAA.

61
Foot to Lee, February 21, 1820, in SAA.

62
Pomeroy to Lee, October 15, 1819, January 10 and February 20, 1820, March 2 and April 5, 1821, in SAA; Evans to Lee, March 28 and April 7, 1821, in SAA; Lee to Decatur, August 20, 1819, in SAA.

63
Foot to Lee, February 21, 1820, in SAA; Pomeroy to Lee, October 15, 1819, January 10, 1820, February 20, 1820, March 2, 1821, April 5, 1821, in SAA; Evans to Lee, March 28, 1821, April 7, 1821, in SAA; Lee to Decatur, August 20, 1819, in SAA; Blanchard to Lee, April 29, 1820, May 34, 1820, in SAA.

64
Blanchard to Lee, February 19, 1821, in SAA.

65
Charles H. Fitch,
The Manufacture of Fire-Arms: Report on the Manufactures of the Interchangeable Mechanism, 1880
(1883; rept., Bradley, IL: Lindsay Publications, 1992), 35.

66
Quoted in Cooper,
Shaping Invention
, 91.

67
Ibid., 47.

68
Waters,
Thomas Blanchard
, 1.

69
The best sources on Hall are Smith,
Harpers Ferry Armory
, 184–251, and R. T. Huntington,
Hall's Breechloaders: John H. Hall's Invention and Development of a Breechloading Rifle with Precision-made Interchangeable Parts and Its Introduction into the United States Service
(York, PA: G. Shumway, 1972), which has extensive selections from Hall's correspondence and various official reports on his rifles.