USA > Connecticut > History of Connecticut, Volume III > Part 8
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The younger partner, Amos Whitney, was born in Biddeford, Maine, and was a member of another branch of the family that pro- duced Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin. At fourteen Whitney was apprenticed at the Essex Machine Company in Lawrence, Massa- chusetts, and later followed his father-an expert machinist and lock- smith-to Colt's. Then he too moved on to Phoenix Iron Works, and met Francis Pratt.
The Company was born in a small rented room on Potter Street
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in Hartford, where Pratt and Whitney did work on their own ac- count in spare time with the few tools they owned. The only furniture in the room was a stove. They had not yet given up their full time jobs at Phoenix, but there was plenty of work for skilled mechanics, both job work and creative designing, and the partners were busy. Their first noteworthy accomplishment was the production of Spen- cer's Automatic Silk Winders designed for the Cheney Silk Mills in Manchester, and later adopted by the Willimantic Linen Company.
As often happens with new companies, their first setback came promptly. The shop had just begun to be recognized as a going con- cern when fire burned out their little room and destroyed all their equipment. Courage is characteristic of pioneers, however, and in less than a year they were in business again, this time in the Woods build- ing at the rear of the old Hartford Times office. This location re- mained their shop during the next few successful years, encompassing the Civil War, until their space became too small for their expanding business and they were compelled to move.
By 1862 more capital was needed. The partners each contributed $1,200, and the same amount was put in the concern by Monroe Stan- nard of New Britain. The latter became a partner and took active charge of the shop since he was the only one of the partners who could give full time to the firm's operations. In 1865, when the original investment of $3,600 had burgeoned to a capital worth of $75,000, the company started construction of a three-story building on Capitol Avenue in Hartford, where the company was to remain (adding new buildings from time to time) for the next seventy-six years. One floor of the new building was rented to the Weed Sewing Machine Company, and it was generally predicted that Weed would eventually take over the entire structure. As it happened, Pratt & Whitney quick- ly outgrew its two floors and Weed was forced to find space elsewhere.
During this period the little company was heavily involved in the manufacture of fire arms, and it was this work that gave impetus to the development of the ideas the founders had had about making interchangeable parts "as like as peas in a pod." Work of such precise nature (the Civil War fire arms) had never been attempted before, and the idea was scoffed at by seasoned mechanics. In those days every piece of machinery was assembled and fitted by hand, and no two parts supposedly the same would interchange. Men like Eli Whit- ney and Samuel Colt had given a lot of thought to interchangeability, and had even presented their ideas to the military services and Con- gress, but it remained for Francis Pratt and Amos Whitney to make Conn. III-7
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the idea practical on a large scale. Much of their success was due to their early awareness of the need for development and use of accurate gages and trustworthy standards of length.
There was no commercial standard inch at that time, and the length of the commercial standard yard varied with the number of yardsticks. Pratt & Whitney soon realized that a practical standard inch of exact dimensions was the basic requirement for the entire sys- tem of interchangeability. Many years of refining the gaging tools already in existence, and inventing new tools, gradually led-by 1882- to the historically famous Rogers-Bond Comparator which is on display in the Gage Demonstration Room of Pratt & Whitney's plant in West Hartford. In 1879, backed by the skill and resources of Pratt & Whit- ney, William A. Rogers, then a professor of astronomy at Harvard College, and George M. Bond of Stevens Institute of Technology, had set up a research and development program that led, three years later, to the comparator bearing their names, a device that made absolutely correct measurements within one fifty-thousandths of an inch.
At the time their project started, tools used for measurements in different shops varied widely in dimension. So, to obtain universally accepted masters for the P & W accuracy program, Professor Rogers journeyed to London to obtain a reliable transfer of the British Im- perial Yard, and to Paris for the French Meter d'Archives. With the cooperation of the United States Coast Survey, he and George Bond made exhaustive and very delicate comparisons of standard measuring bars produced by Pratt & Whitney with the United States Standard Yard designated as Bronze No. 11. Years of time and many thou- sands of dollars went into this work, with the net result that Pratt & Whitney succeeded in making several accurate copies of all three standards: The British, French and American. These famous copies (bars) were the basis of Pratt & Whitney accuracy and established the company as the outstanding authority on accuracy.
The success of the Rogers-Bond Comparator led to the develop- ment of the Pratt & Whitney Standard Measuring Machine, which is recognized all over the world as a basic gage for the construction and duplication of recognized standards of length. Using the Standard Measuring Machine (which reads measurements directly to .00001") as a reference, Pratt & Whitney developed a host of other gages for a variety of purposes: supermicrometers, thread checkers of many types, basic measuring tools of high accuracy, continuous rolling mill gages, and pneumatic, electric, electronic, transistorized and tape-con- trolled gaging equipment.
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In July, 1869 the Company was formally incorporated under a State of Connecticut charter with a capitalization of $300,000. This was increased, mostly by earnings, to $400,000 by 1873 and to $500,000 by 1875.
Soon after the Franco-Prussian War, in 1870, Pratt & Whitney entered a new phase in the gun making business. An agent of the Company that year visited the Imperial and private gun factories of Germany, and discovered that antiquated machinery and tools were being used. An urgent summons was dispatched to Francis Pratt. After a six weeks visit to Germany, Pratt returned with German government orders for machinery totaling $350,000. In the next three years he made six additional trips to Germany and brought back orders for additional equipment and machinery to the value of $1,250,000- an outstanding transaction in those days. These contracts called for the delivery of the equipment to Hamburg, to be transferred to three different Prussian arsenals. A supplemental contract specified super- vision of erecting and testing the equipment, and instructing the Ger- man operators. This work was done so well that, contrary to its own precedent, the German government addressed a letter to Pratt & Whitney Company which read in part as follows: "The Pratt & Whit- ney Company has furnished the Royal Armories of Spondan, Erfurt and Donsitz with plants of machinery which execute the work with such nicety and precision as to save one half the wages, and to render the Government in no small degree independent of the power and skill of the workmen."
Pratt & Whitney's activities as gun smiths and manufacturers of machinery for making guns brought them many models to be de- veloped under the supervision of their inventors. Among these was the Lee gun, the father of all bolt action guns, and the forerunner of the Lee-Enfield and Medford rifles. The Mauser was developed under the personal direction of its inventor. The Sponsel gun, an adaptation of the Hotchkiss, the deKnight machine gun, and a Re- mington model were all made in the Pratt & Whitney shop.
In 1904 a contract with the Japanese Government called for the building of tools, gages and machinery for making shrapnel shells at the rate of 700 per day, and following this came an order for six-inch naval gun sights for the United States Government. In 1909 Pratt & Whitney signed a contract with the Australian Arsenal at Lithgow for a plant equipped to produce fifty Lee-Enfield rifles per day. Since British and Australian rifles were required to interchange, it was es- sential for Pratt & Whitney to design a complete gaging system for
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this contract. It is worth noting that Pratt & Whitney's bid on this contract included just 300 machines and a production rate of one gun every twenty-three hours, against the best British bid of 700 machines and a rate of one gun every seventy-two hours.
At other times in the Company's history complete plants, or ma- chinery for arsenals, were supplied by Pratt & Whitney to the Ameri- can, British, Spanish, French, Belgian, Italian, Russian, Chinese, Cana- dian, Greek and Chilean governments, and equipment for making and gaging the world's guns to many other nations. A model of the famous rapid-fire Gardner gun, used both for field artillery and on naval vessels, is on display in the main office building of Pratt & Whitney in West Hartford.
Gun making was important to the company's growth, of course, but it actually represented only a small part of the total business. Prior to 1900 the Company had designed and manufactured an as- tonishing variety of machine tools and other products. Among the former were lathes; boring mills; shapers; planers; vertical drills; grinders ; screw, tapping, milling and cam cutting machines; die sink- ers : profilers ; power and broaching presses ; power hammers; and so on. Related products included cranes, reciprocating hydraulic engines, cartridge-varnishing machines, bolt cutters, cutting tools, lathe chucks, wrenches, and iron molders flasks. In some instances, complete equip- ment was furnished for entire factories.
Among the products unrelated to machine tools manufactured by Pratt & Whitney before the turn of the century were automatic weighing machines for grain and coal (about 1890), counter devices (1895)-similar to those used on machine tools today, the first model of the noiseless typewriter, the Moore and Sholes typewriters, the Hol- lerith tabulating machine, envelope machinery (later to become the property of the United States Envelope Company), and (in 1889 to 1890) the original model of the Paige Typesetter that cost Mark Twain a fortune. The last item proved far too expensive and complicated to build and market, but its design formed the basis of the Mergenthaler and other typesetting machines used today. The original model is now in the Sibley College of Engineering, Cornell University.
In 1901 Pratt & Whitney Company was purchased by Niles- Bement-Pond Company, the largest and most aggressive machine tool manufacturing and sales organization in the world at that time. As a subsidiary. Pratt & Whitney was reorganized with more attention paid to manufacturing on a quantity basis. From that time on Pratt & Whitney dropped its excursions into other fields, except gun mak-
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ing as occasion demanded, and became what it is today-exclusively a manufacturer of machine tools, cutting tools and gages.
One of the most critical shortages disclosed as a result of the speeded-up manufacturing program of World War I was in accurate gage blocks. The only gage blocks available at that time were imported from Sweden in very small quantities and at high prices. As the world's leading gage manufacturer, Pratt & Whitney tackled this problem in combination with Major Hoke of the Ordnance Depart- ment of the United States Government. Major Hoke had invented a system for precision lapping of hardened and ground steel blocks, but this was a laboratory process, and it needed the ingenuity of Pratt & Whitney to turn that original idea into a practical manufacturing sys- tem. The result was the production of Hoke Precision Gage Blocks that could be guaranteed accurate within tolerances as close as 5 millionths of an inch.
A contemporary development was the world's first jig borer, an ultra precision machine that caused a revolution in tool room pro- cedures all over the world. It is interesting to note here that at the very moment Pratt & Whitney was bringing a jig borer to completion in America, the machine tool and gage manufacturer Societe Gene- voise D'Instruments de Physique in Switzerland, working indepen- dently, was developing a similar machine. The coincidence did not stop there; throughout the years the refinement and enlargement of the P & W and Swiss machines have kept pace, and they are recognized to- day as the two most accurate machine tools the world has ever produced.
In the period of slow business activity from 1920 to 1925, Pratt & Whitney revised and re-designed its products, work which the fever- ish war activities had curtailed. Then it had been necessary to turn out machine tools in the quickest possible manner, and there was little time for new developments which were not absolutely essential. This re-creation period saw Pratt & Whitney engineers delving into new metals and applying, in a practical peace-time fashion. the knowledge gained during the war. New designs were worked out, better methods were developed, and Pratt & Whitney products were raised to new and better standards; "Accuracy Headquarters" became a slogan.
During this time, also, the Pratt & Whitney Aircraft Company was formed to develop and build the radial air-cooled aircraft engines which have achieved an international reputation. Here again Pratt & Whitney precision was of utmost importance. The Aircraft Company was later sold to the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation. and was moved to its present location in East Hartford.
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Beginning in 1930 the already extensive Pratt & Whitney pro- duct line was increased by the purchase of a number of other com- panies whose products were easily integrated. The first of these was the John-Sons Company of Hartford, manufacturers of roll thread snap gages. These gages filled a competitive gap in Pratt & Whitney's conventional gage line.
A much more important addition came in 1931 with the purchase of the Keller Mechanical Engineering Corporation of Brooklyn. This company had been making die sinking machines since the turn of the century, and had been the inventor, in about 1920, of automatic tracer- controlled milling. Keller machines-some of them weighing fifty tons and more-have been vital to the growth and progress of the automotive and aircraft industries. The same machines had the same revolutionary effect on forging dies, bottle molds, the design and manufacture of railway cars and boats. Keller machines are used for cutting religious figures in Vermont marble and souvenir figures sold by Indian trading posts. Kellerflex flexible shaft machines, and their accessory burs, pencil stones, sanding drums and so on, are in use in industry everywhere, from removing the weld bulges from milk separators to the finishing of metal architectural forms by one of the world's finest sculptors, Jose de Rivera.
In 1948 Pratt & Whitney acquired the internationally famous Potter & Johnston Company of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, manufac- turer of automatic turret lathes since 1898. The history of this com- pany parallels that of Pratt & Whitney in many respects. Potter & Johnston was started as a partnership by two Scotsmen. Its founders were more than just expert mechanics, and, while their main interest was building machine tools, they also invented or developed many other devices along the way, including textile spinning frames, oil burners, linotype machines, railway air brake operating valves, auto- mobile cylinder lubricators and automatic chokes, water filters and smokeless ash trays. Potter & Johnston during World War I built and equipped an entire ordnance shell plant. In 1922 the company set up a subsidiary known as Potter Fine Spinners, Inc. for manufacturing an extremely high grade of English-type broadcloth. When Potter & Johnston became a subsidiary of Pratt & Whitney it continued operat- ing in its factory in Pawtucket until April 1, 1959, when its complete facilities were transferred to the parent company's plant in West Hartford.
The Sterling Die Company of Cleveland was Pratt & Whitney's next acquisition, in 1955. This was a relatively new company that had
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become one of the leaders in the manufacture of thread rolling dies, tools that have contributed heavily to the increased production of screws and fasteners, particularly of those highly accurate screws and fasteners demanded by the aircraft and missile industries. The fol- lowing year Pratt & Whitney purchased Jaquith Carbide Company of Lynn, Massachusetts, manufacturers of carbide extruding and progressive dies. As Pratt & Whitney divisions, both these companies are continuing to operate with the same managements and in the same locations as before, but with greatly increased facilities. Sterling Die Division, in particular, acts also as midwest stocking point for both Sterling dies and Pratt & Whitney tools and gages.
The only company in an unrelated business purchased by Pratt & Whitney during this period was Chandler-Evans Corporation of Meriden, Connecticut, whose carburetors, fuel pumps and other air- craft accessories are used in nearly all American planes, both civilian and military. That company's facilities were moved to one wing of the expanded Pratt & Whitney plant in 1943, and Chandler-Evans became a subsidiary. Sixteen years later its sales and manufacturing volume had become so large that Chandler-Evans once again became an independent company, although it remains in the same family group of companies in which we now find Pratt & Whitney is a member.
The past five years of Pratt & Whitney's history have been among its most turbulent. On the one hand, its engineers have been developing tape-controlled machines, gages and systems, and putting the Company in the lead in the race to provide ultra-precise machines, tools and gages for the Missile Age. On the other hand, the management of the com- pany has gone through some radical changes.
In 1955, Niles-Bement-Pond Company was merged into the Penn- Texas Corporation. Shortly thereafter the name Niles-Bement-Pond was dropped and Pratt & Whitney Company, Incorporated was estab- lished as a Penn-Texas subsidiary. Four years later, in 1959, Penn- Texas was officially renamed Fairbanks Whitney Corporation. Today, besides Pratt & Whitney, other industrial enterprises in the Fairbanks Whitney family of companies included: Fairbanks Morse, Chandler- Evans, Colt's Patent Firearms, "Quick-Way" Truck Shovel, Bayway Terminal, and Pennsylvania Coal and Coke.
In Pratt & Whitney's long history it has always been necessary, periodically, for the management to pause to examine objectively its progress, and how that progress was made, and what direction the Company should take in the future. In the present phase the Company is consolidating operations, modernizing methods, replacing old equip-
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ment with the most modern types, and aiming its engineering planning for the products that will be required in the Missile Age. Pratt & Whitney's future should be as glorious as its past.
PUTNAM CATHOLIC ACADEMY
Putnam Catholic Academy, a school for girls conducted by the Daughters of the Holy Ghost, is located at 72 Church Street, Putnam, which is in the northeast corner of the state, only a few miles from the Massachusetts and Rhode Island boundaries. It is pleasantly situated on extensive grounds which afford every facility for recreation and sports.
Founded in 1928 by the Daughters of the Holy Ghost, the school is affiliated with the Catholic University, Washington, D. C., and is accredited by the Connecticut State Board of Education and the Na- tional Catholic Educational Association. Its course of study has been designed to meet the entrance requirements of standard colleges, nor- mal schools, hospital training schools, commercial schools, and schools of music. It has as its purpose the providing of its students with a broad cultural education, with the inculcation of the principles of the Catholic way of life. Its efforts are centered on effecting in each stu- dent the development of the whole person : physical, intellectual, social, civic, moral and spiritual.
Its four-year course offers a wide curriculum in both academic and commercial subjects ; and it has a well-trained and devoted faculty under the administrative leadership of a principal, Sister Louise Sophie.
ST. JOHN'S PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH, STAMFORD
The first St. John's Church was completed and opened for public worship in March, 1747. It had been erected on a plot of ground measuring forty-five by thirty-five feet and bounded on the east and west by an almost impassable swamp.
Its construction followed by about four decades the first Episco- palian services held in Stamford, which were conducted in 1706 by the Rev. George Muirson, who came from Rye, New York. It was not until 1727 that the General Assembly granted Episcopalians release from taxation toward the support of the established Congre- gational Church. Between 1727 and 1748, occasional services were held by the Episcopal group. At a town meeting held in 1742, the request for the use of a piece of land by the church was granted.
The first rector was the Rev. Ebenezer Dibblee, who assumed
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charge of St. John's Parish in October, 1748, and served until his death on May 9, 1799, at the age of eighty-four. There were no regular rectors for the next eleven years, but on October 10, 1810 the Rev. Jonathan Judd assumed the duties of that post. Through his help and influence, all religious bodies were placed on equal footing before the law. The Rev. Mr. Judd resigned in 1822 and was succeeded by the Rev. Ambrose S. Todd, who served until his death on June 22, 1861. During his tenure of service, a new and larger St. John's Church was constructed, on the site of the first church. On April 19, 1843, Bishop Brownell consecrated the new edifice, which had been designed by Thomas P. Dixon. Mr. Dixon was also the designer of P. T. Barnum's residence at Bridgeport, as well as private homes and public buildings in Hartford.
St. John's fifth rector, the Rev. Dr. Tatlock, was responsible for many improvements, including the establishment in 1882 of St. John's Church House for the aid of the sick, the aged and the orphaned. This institution preceded the establishment of Stamford Hospital by fourteen years.
In 1890 the second St. John's Church was completely destroyed by fire. One year later, on All Saints Day, the third St. John's was completed, at a cost of nearly one hundred and seventy thousand dollars. The Parish Church became the memorial to Dr. Tatlock who died in 1896. Soon after, the Reverend Charles Morris Addison be- came the Rector, resigning in 1919 after a very effective ministry which was noted for his development of services for special occasions.
The present rector, the Rev. Stanley F. Hemsley, was born in England. He arrived in the United States in 1919, and was ordained in 1933. He came to St. John's Church as assistant to the Rev. Gerald A. Cunningham, the rector from 1920 to 1942; and succeeded the Rev. Mr. Cunningham as rector in the latter year.
The church's address is 628 Main Street, Stamford.
SAINT JOHN'S ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH CROMWELL, CONNECTICUT
The first Catholics to settle in Cromwell, in 1846, attended reli- gious services at Saint John's Church in Middletown, and it was not until 1877 that Mass was said in Cromwell, in Stevens' Hall, now the floor above Grower's Market. The priest who celebrated the first Mass was the Reverend Francis P. O'Keefe.
The first resident pastor in the area, the Reverend John H. Ryan, D.D., came in 1880 and served Cromwell, Rocky Hill and Kensing-
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ton. He purchased land in Cromwell, ground was broken in 1881, and Saint John's Church of Cromwell was dedicated by Bishop McMahon on April 22, 1883. From the three Catholics who established them- selves in Cromwell in 1846, the parish now numbers more than three thousand souls.
The original rectory was replaced and remodeled, the basement of the first church became a parish hall, a Sunday school classroom area and an auxiliary chapel, and the parish was prospering when, on March 1, 1953, a fire broke out and completely destroyed the church. Yet in spite of the conflagration, which occurred on a Sunday, Masses were held at the Nathaniel White School. A garage was con- verted into a temporary chapel for daily Masses, Confessions and Baptisms, Sunday services were held in the school auditorium, Saint John's Church in Middletown was available for weddings, funerals and First Communion classes, and the members of the parish did not lack spiritual assistance.
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