Travel: Springfield and the Birth of Mass Production

The Springfield Armory, as seen from outside its main gate.

(National Park Service)

You’ve probably never heard of the eccentric lathe invented by Thomas Blanchard in 1819, but that conglomeration of gears, levers, and wheels formed the basis of the first mechanized production line in American history. An early example of the lathe, which transformed a block of wood into the complicated shape of a gunstock, is on display at the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Massachusetts. The Springfield Armory was an incubator of the industrial revolution in this country. The development of standardized parts and factory production back then, like the invention of the computer chip in our own time, transformed daily life. A visit to the armory, one of the few remnants of the Silicon Valley of the nineteenth century, provides an intriguing look at a dynamic era.

Springfield became a supply depot for the Continental Army in 1777, and gunsmiths there repaired muskets and manufactured cartridges during the Revolution. In 1794 the United States government decided to start manufacturing small arms, and over the next few years President Washington created two federal armories, one at Springfield and the other at Harpers Ferry, Virginia. Springfield was chosen because it was well protected by being 60 miles inland and offered good roads and abundant waterpower from tributaries of the Connecticut River.

The first thing you notice there is the fence. The armory’s hilltop location was chosen to protect it from attack. The fence, begun in the 1850s, was fashioned from melted-down cannonballs and guns. Its rows of imposing nine-foot-high iron pikes encircle the entire complex.

The need to fortify the facility was proven as early as January 1787, when a group of Massachusetts farmers, disgruntled over ruinously high taxes, marched on the arms depot under the leadership of Daniel Shays. It was a serious rebellion, and it was squelched by artillery fire from the militiamen protecting the arsenal.

The armory produced 245 flintlock muskets in its first year of operation. Workers constructed the weapons by hand, using traditional craft techniques and a rudimentary division of labor. For years, military men had unsuccessfully pursued the idea of interchangeability of parts, which they felt would standardize small arms and allow their speedy repair in the field. Beginning around 1815, technicians at Springfield began a three-decade-long concerted effort to achieve the ideal. Much of the impetus was provided by Lt. Col. Roswell Lee, who was in charge of the armory from 1815 to 1833.

Blanchard’s machines were a key part of the program. Blanchard was engaged in the 1820s as an “inside contractor,” in essence running a private company on armory grounds. At the time, it took an entire day for an experienced workman to form a gunstock from a walnut form. Using his lathe and a series of other ingenious machines, Blanchard was able to speed production dramatically. Eventually the armory would produce 14 finished gunstocks every hour. Other inventors took the techniques that Blanchard had applied to wood and used them to craft metal parts more quickly and precisely as well. These methods became the core of what would become known as the American system of manufactures, the foundation of mass production. In 1844 workmen at the armory produced the first muskets made entirely from interchangeable parts.

The government ordered the armory to share its techniques and machinery with private contractors, and as a result its improvements in production, which came from both engineers and ordinary workmen, were rapidly disseminated among the machine shops of the Connecticut Valley and beyond, speeding the transition to a factory-based economy.

The core of the armory was a group of elegant brick buildings around a large quadrangle that once had been the town’s training field. The facility always looked more like a college campus than an industrial works. In fact, since the armory’s closing, much of the facility has been turned over to a technical community college, with most of the early brick structures preserved.

The museum is in the massive 1848 main arsenal building, and the first thing you encounter when you enter it is a display about the machinery and operation of the armory. It describes the evolution of metalworking techniques, with explanations of processes like forging, casting, and machining. You see a rifling machine for cutting grooves inside barrels and a post–Civil War “chronoscope,” an intricate collection of brass gears and tubes that was used to measure the speed of a bullet.

The armory was already famous as a technological wonder when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow visited, on his honeymoon, in 1843. The poet was impressed by the racks of thousands of finished muskets standing ready for use. “From floor to ceiling,/ Like a huge organ, rise the burnished arms,” he wrote at the beginning of his antiwar poem “The Arsenal at Springfield.” A version of the “organ” is part of the second half of the museum’s display, which features small arms, particularly ones made right at Springfield. Videos and examples of antique weapons take you through the entire history of firearms, among them the M1903 bolt-action repeating rifle, which became famous during World War I.

After that conflict, the Army demanded a new rifle that would use gas pressure to automatically eject one spent shell and load another. John C. Garand, a Canadian-born technician at Springfield, designed the rifle that was designated the M-1. Gen. George S. Patton called it “the greatest battle implement ever devised.” It became the mainstay of American troops in World War II, during which the Springfield Armory turned out 4.5 million rifles.

The roots of the museum go back to 1862, when the armory began a reference collection for its workers. The usefulness of such a resource is evident from the exhibit that shows early versions of the Gatling gun, invented in 1861. In the 1950s, archival research by armory technicians into that multi-barreled machine gun helped in the development of the 6,000-rounds-per-minute Vulcan electric machine gun, which became the main weapon for helicopter gunships in Vietnam. The armory did less well producing an infantry weapon that could be used as a machine gun; its M-14 was a disappointment that couldn’t fire reliably on full automatic.

The Springfield Armory fell victim to bureaucratic infighting and cost-cutting in the 1960s, and Defense Secretary Robert McNamara ordered it closed in 1968. Today its buildings house not only the museum and the technical college but also offices for private industry.

A tour of the museum can leave you with the same mixture of awe and dread that Longfellow experienced more than a century and a half ago. Many of the weapons are appealingly graceful in their design. Wooden test blocks, sliced open, show the penetrating power of a rifle bullet. A nineteenth-century weapon punched only about three and a half inches into a block; the 1903 Springfield tore through more than 27 inches of seasoned oak from 200 yards away. The idea of these weapons aiming at human flesh raises thoughts of Longfellow’s “infinite fierce chorus” of the war wounded.

The closing of the armory ended a long era of Springfield as a thriving center of innovation. In 1826 Blanchard himself drove through the city in what some consider the first American automobile, a steam-powered vehicle he had invented. Charles and Frank Duryea built the nation’s first gasoline car in the city in 1893.

It was also home to George Hendee, who introduced the innovative Indian motorcycle in 1901. Plans are afoot to reopen an Indian motorcycle museum in Springfield next year (a previous one failed). Rolls-Royce chose the city, with its wealth of skilled machinists, for its only American production facility, producing the “Springfield Silver Ghost” there for 10 years beginning in 1921.

Springfield’s nineteenth-century prosperity survives in streets full of genteel Victorian homes not far from the armory. And its nineteenth-century energy survives in sports arenas across the nation. When in 1891 local YMCA officials were looking for a way to divert restless students and mill workers during the winter months, they commissioned Dr. James Naismith to invent an indoor recreation. He drew up thirteen rules for a game he called “basket ball.” Today, the Basketball Hall of Fame, in Springfield, commemorates Naismith’s contribution to athletics.

The Springfield Armory National Historic Site is open daily from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Knowledgeable Park Service staff members are available to answer questions. For more information visit www.nps.gov/spar or call (413) 734-8551.

—Jack Kelly writes often for American Heritage magazine and is the author of Gunpowder: Alchemy, Bombards, and Pyrotechnics—A History of the Explosive That Changed the World (Basic Books).