Robbins & Lawrence And The American System

The revolutionary “American system” of manufacturing interchangeable parts began in armories like Robbins & Lawrence’s. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, as now, advances in technology were often stimulated by military need. Army muskets at the time were assembled from pieces that resembled one another but were not machined precisely enough to fit together without extensive hand filing.

In 1813 Simeon North, of Berlin, Connecticut, won the first contract to make guns whose elements would be interchangeable. Recent research has debunked the legend that Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton gin, was the father of interchangeability. According to Battison, “Whitney’s greatest invention was himself.”

Robbins & Lawrence went into the arms business in 1845, winning a three-year contract for ten thousand rifles at $10.90 apiece. Richard Lawrence later wrote: “We had nothing to start with—buildings or capital. … We had nerve and pluck.” The job was completed an unheard-of eighteen months before deadline.

The managers of Robbins & Lawrence took their precision-made rifles to the Crystal Palace Exhibition in London in 1851 and with them won worldwide notice. Afterward the British government sent a committee to study American manufacturers; its members were so impressed by Robbins & Lawrence machine tools that they ordered 152 metalworking machines for England’s Enfield Armory. According to Battison, “This was the original introduction of the American system out of the country.”

The American system found countless applications in the production of equipment from sewing machines to reapers, and it put the nation firmly on the path to twentieth-century mass production.