Industrial History
Read about Hall’s Rifle Works, the U.S. Armory and the mills on Virginius Island. Learn about the machines and equipment in these factories and meet the men and entrepreneurs who ran them. Find out more about the devastation of flooding and unpredictable streamflow that plagued local industry. Many historic photographs and detailed line drawings of machines compliment the text.Author: David T. Gilbert. Publisher: Harpers Ferry Park Association. Paperback, 192 pages. Measures 8.25" x 7.75" x 0.6". Weighs 13 oz.
James Henry Burtonspent ten eventful years at the Harpers Ferry Armory. During this tenure, he perfected an elongated bullet for the regulation .58-caliber rifle-musket—commonly called the Minié bullet—helped test and perfect new lock mechanisms, barrel rifling, and machinery. Burton’s drawings range from simple sketches used to flesh out components of operating mechanisms to dimensioned, hand-tinted drawings of firearm components and complex machinery. According to John Symington, Supt. of the Harpers Ferry Armory, Burton’s “management was so satisfactory, and his ingenuity in devising, draughting and perfecting tools and machines so marked, as to cause me at once to select him as a fit person to fill the position of Master Armorer…” The Burton Drawings at Harpers Ferry focuses on the remarkable achievements of James H. Burton during his 10-year tenure at the Harpers Ferry Armory. Burton’s notes, sketches, and detailed drawings teach us a great deal about the emergence of 19th century drafting practice and the evolution of firearm technology during the decade preceding the civil war. Author: David T. Gilbert. Publisher: Harpers Ferry Park Association. Paperback, 64 pages. Measures 8.5" x 8.5" x 0.2". Weighs 5.8 oz.
Focusing on the day-to-day operations of the U.S. armory at Harpers Ferry, Virginia, from 1798 to 1861, this book shows what the "new technology" of mechanized production meant in terms of organization, management, and worker morale. A local study of much more than local significance, it highlights the major problems of technical innovation and social adaptation in antebellum America. Merritt Roe Smith describes how positions of authority at the armory were tied to a larger network of political and economic influence in the community; how these relationships, in turn, affected managerial behavior; and how local social conditions reinforced the reactions of decision makers. He also demonstrates how craft traditions and variant attitudes toward work vis-à-vis New England created an atmosphere in which the machine was held suspect and inventive activity was hampered. Of central importance is the author's analysis of the drastic differences between Harpers Ferry and its counterpart, the national armory at Springfield, Massachusetts, which played a pivotal role in the emergence of the new technology. The flow of technical information between the two armories, he shows, moved in one direction only― north to south. "In the end," Smith concludes, "the stamina of local culture is paramount in explaining why the Harpers Ferry armory never really flourished as a center of technological innovation." Pointing up the complexities of industrial change, this account of the Harpers Ferry experience challenges the commonly held view that Americans have always been eagerly receptive to new technological advances. Publisher: Cornell University Press. Paperback, 364 pages. Measures 9" x 5.75" x 0.8". Weighs 1 lb 2.1 oz.
A century and a half before the modern information technology revolution, machinists in the eastern United States created the nation's first high technology industries. In iron foundries and steam-engine works, locomotive works, machine and tool shops, textile-machinery firms, and firearms manufacturers, these resourceful workers pioneered the practice of dispersing technological expertise through communities of practice.In the first book to study this phenomenon since the 1916 classic, English and American Tool Builders, David R. Meyer examines the development of skilled-labor exchange systems, showing how individual metalworking sectors grew and moved outward. He argues that the networked behavior of machinists within and across industries helps explain the rapid transformation of metalworking industries during the antebellum period, building a foundation for the sophisticated, mass production/consumer industries that figured so prominently in the later U.S. economy.Publisher: John Hopkins University Press. Hardback, 312 pages. Measures 9.25" x 6.25" x 1.12". Weighs 1 lb 9.1 oz.