. The magazine of American history with notes and queries. ualityresulting from this system of manufacture. The plan of uniformity in fire-arms was attempted in France in 1783, andwas noticed by Thomas Jefferson, whose versatile mind was quick to appre-ciate any ingenious measure. Jefferson advised the purchase by the UnitedStates Government of French arms having the feature of uniformity, butnothing came of it. The attempt in France was abandoned as afailure, and the idea, like that of the musquito fleet and otherschemes of Jeffersons prolific ingenuity, was laid aside to mellow till itstime.
. The magazine of American history with notes and queries. ualityresulting from this system of manufacture. The plan of uniformity in fire-arms was attempted in France in 1783, andwas noticed by Thomas Jefferson, whose versatile mind was quick to appre-ciate any ingenious measure. Jefferson advised the purchase by the UnitedStates Government of French arms having the feature of uniformity, butnothing came of it. The attempt in France was abandoned as afailure, and the idea, like that of the musquito fleet and otherschemes of Jeffersons prolific ingenuity, was laid aside to mellow till itstime. The next appearance of interchangeable fire-arms in Europe was atthe London Exhibition of 1852, where the American rifles shown by Rob-bins and Lawrence of Windsor, Vermont, were awarded a prize medal, andthese, as well as the revolvers of Colt of Hartford, Connecticut, gave evi-dence of the existence of a system of uniformity in fire-arms which hadlong been maturing in this country. Whitney does not at first appear as a disciple of Tubal-Cain, but as a. THOMAS WARNER. 518 THE RISE OF A MECHANICAL IDEAL man more versed in letters and a Yankee tutor in the South. The idealitywith which he essayed in a novel manner an undertaking so entirelyforeign to his experience, and the concentration and persistency with whichhe pushed it to a practical success, mark him as a man of unusual a long time after his invention of the cotton gin he led a vexed andlitigious life in the assertion of his claims against infringers of his patents,and finally turned all his energies to the manufacture of fire-arms. Unable to procure skilled labor for the work, he surmounted the ob-stacle by the resources of his own native skill, employing a novel processof manufacture and giving the work his close personal direction. Hissystem was a scientific one. Instead of employing single gunsmiths tomake entire guns, he analyzed the gun and applied himself to the manu-facture of its several parts in
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