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80:, into a prosperous family able to provide all six sons with farms of their own. North was given a farm in Berlin, a gift that enabled him to marry Lucy Savage when he was only twenty-one years old; the couple had five sons and three daughters. In 1795 the Norths purchased a sawmill located on the brook that ran beside their land. Simeon hired a man to help run it, enlarged the building to house a forge and trip-hammer, and began manufacturing scythes from imported steel. Four years later, he obtained a contract to make pistols and began to add a factory to the mill building.
107:, a clockmaker who had trained as a clockmaker with either Timothy or Benjamin Cheney, had just invented a method of producing the parts for wooden shelf, or pillar-and-scroll clocks that enabled them to be mass-produced using interchangeable parts. Cheney used his new plant to mass-produce parts that manufacturers were turning out in emulation of Eli Terry's innovation. Cheney is known to have also produced screws and small metal parts in his mill for the pistols his brother-in-law was manufacturing just downstream.
162:, Virginia (now in West Virginia), to introduce his methods of achieving interchangeability. In 1828, North received a contract to produce 5,000 Hall rifles with parts interchangeable with those produced at Harpers Ferry. North had a 53-year contractual relationship with the United States Department of War. The report of Charles H. Fitch prepared for the 1880 Census credits North with a key role in developing manufacture with interchangeable parts.
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By 1813, North had signed a government contract to produce 20,000 pistols that specified that parts of the lock had to be completely interchangeable between any of the 20,000 locks: the first contract of which any such evidence exists. It was during this period that North is believed to have
103:, two of the finest clockmakers in Connecticut. In 1810, Elisha Cheney moved his clock-making shop to the next waterpower site upstream from North. Although Cheney was trained as a maker of fine clocks in brass and other materials,
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North is now generally credited with the invention of the milling machine, the first entirely new type of machine invented in
America and one which, by replacing filing, made the production of interchangeable parts practicable.
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invented a milling machine, which was able to shape metal mechanically and thus replaced filing by hand. Historian
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Extra Census
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believes that he accomplished this around 1816. According to Muir's book
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Simeon North: First
Official Pistol Maker of the United States: A Memoir
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Reflections in
Bullough's Pond: Economy and Ecosystem in New England
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was a skilled clockmaker, a trade he had learned from his father
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As North's business grew, he moved it from Berlin to nearby
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North, Simon Newton Dexter; North, Ralph H. (1913),
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56:Simeon North, Jr. (President of Hamilton College)
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180:"Pair of Flintlock Duelling Pistols ca. 1815–20"
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156:Captain John H. Hall
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298:Categories
207:pp. 4,5,26
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