One of these pioneers was Thomas Blanchard, born in 1788 on a
farm in Worcester County, Massachusetts, the home also of Eli
Whitney and Elias Howe. Tom began his mechanical career at the
age of thirteen by inventing a device to pare apples. At the age
of eighteen he went to work in his brother's shop, where tacks
were made by hand, and one day took to his brother a mechanical
device for counting the tacks to go into a single packet. The
invention was adopted and was found to save the labor of one
workman. Tom's next achievement was a machine to make tacks, on
which he spent six years and the rights of which he sold for five
thousand dollars. It was worth far more, for it revolutionized
the tack industry, but such a sum was to young Blanchard a great
fortune.
The tack-making machine gave Blanchard a reputation, and he was
presently sought out by a gun manufacturer, to see whether he
could improve the lathe for turning the barrels of the guns.
Blanchard could; and did. His next problem was to invent a lathe
for turning the irregular wooden stocks. Here he also succeeded
and produced a lathe that would copy precisely and rapidly any
pattern. It is from this invention that the name of Blanchard is
best known. The original machine is preserved in the United
States Armory at Springfield, to which Blanchard was attached for
many years, and where scores of the descendants of his copying
lathe may be seen in action today.
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