---
title: "History"
url: "https://americanprecision.org/history/"
language: "en-US"
updated: "2025-03-14T13:00:36+00:00"
---

# History

## History

###### The American Precision Museum combines the atmosphere of an original 19th century factory building with a world-class collection of historic machines. The 1846 armory building, the “Shaping America” exhibition and accompanying programs explore industrial history in the context of innovation, creative problem solving, and the impact of precision manufacturing on American history and culture.

### Robbins and Lawrence Armory

The American Precision Museum is located in the Robbins & Lawrence Armory, a National Historic Landmark located in Windsor, Vermont. In 1846, Samuel Robbins, Nicanor Kendall, and Richard Lawrence took the bold step of bidding on a government contract for 10,000 rifles. Having won the contract, they then constructed a four-story brick building beside Mill Brook. They brought in workers and mechanics, invented new machines, adapted old ones, and perfected techniques for producing interchangeable parts. Within a few years, they were exporting not only rifles but also their new metal cutting machines across North America, to England and around the world. The technology for making guns was quickly adapted to making consumer products as well as parts for many other machines.

[![Postcard of Old Armory Dam, Windsor, Vermont 1904](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/postcard-Mill-Brook-crop-dickens-water-ca-1904.jpg)](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/postcard-Mill-Brook-crop-dickens-water-ca-1904.jpg)
*Postcard of Old Armory Dam, Windsor, Vermont 1904*

The imposing, four-story structure rises from a stone foundation adjacent to a brook that provided immediate and efficient use of waterpower. Inside, power was distributed throughout each floor with line shafting; the shafts were connected to individual machines by leather belts. Abundant windows and the building’s narrow width relative to its length (40’ x 100’), brought daylight into the interior work areas. Outside, the immediate neighborhood is still home to worker housing that was built at various times in the factory’s history. The nearby Connecticut River and the active railroad attest to the importance of transportation in the development of the site.

### National Historic Landmark

The armory building is significant for its architectural integrity, which reflects the size, scale, and operation of a 19th century factory. A *National Historic Landmark*, in 2001 it was designated a special project of *Save America’s Treasures*; in 2003, APM received a *Save America’s Treasures* award of $200,000 for installing a new slate roof to replace the deteriorated original. The museum was designated an *International Heritage Site and Collection* by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers in 1987. For each of these designations, the armory was considered a site where pivotal events occurred in the history of American industry, as well as a place that lends itself to comprehensive interpretation of that history.

[![Robbins and Lawrence Armory circa Civil War](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Armory-w-footbridge-2-story-addn-from-Wsm.jpg)](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Armory-w-footbridge-2-story-addn-from-Wsm.jpg)
*Robbins & Lawrence Armory circa Civil War*

### Early Manufacturing and the “American System”

The first phase of the Industrial Revolution was introduced in America during the late 18th century and was modeled on the English system of textile manufacturing. In 1846, when the Armory was built, the second phase of the Industrial Revolution—the “American System”—was about to be launched. In the remote village of Windsor, entrepreneurs and artisans had already constructed a series of dams that powered sawmills and a gristmill on the Mill Brook, 18 buildings and shops in total. In these small workshops, inventors developed designs for new products as well as making both new and old items more quickly. In Windsor and other towns up and down the Connecticut River Valley, new industries attracted more people and stimulated the creation of commercial downtowns. Mills, stores, and homes were clustered between the river and the steep hillsides.

[![The Lamson, Goodnow, and Yale machine tool manufacturing complex, circa 1860s. The armory building is far right, surrounded by the many additional shops in the complex.](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Lamson-Goodnow-Yale-machine-tool-manufacturing-complex-in-Windsor-Vermont.jpg)](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Lamson-Goodnow-Yale-machine-tool-manufacturing-complex-in-Windsor-Vermont.jpg)
*The Lamson, Goodnow, and Yale machine tool manufacturing complex, circa 1860s. The armory building is far right, surrounded by the many additional shops in the complex.*

American contractors and manufacturing firms such as Robbins and Lawrence and Colt exhibited at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. (This event, officially known as the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,” was the first World’s Fair.) A few years later, the British Parliament sent a group to study the ‘American System’ of interchangeable manufacturing and to secure the machinery necessary to introduce the system at the Enfield Armory near London.

What’s the American System of Manufacturing? It depends [who you ask](https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/topic/american-system-of-manufacturing/), and Generally speaking, these elements are included:

1. Division of labor: Instead of one craftsman making each part by hand, machine tools (and jigs) were used for different operations. Semi-skilled workers could then run a machine that would make the same part in the same way.
2. Interchangeable Parts: “Component parts of pistols are to correspond so exactly that any limb or part of one pistol may be fitted to any other pistol of the twenty thousand,” is what a US Government Contract (the first to specify ‘Interchangeable Parts’) said to Simeon North. In order to be sure that parts are in fact interchangeable, measurement and [quality assurance](http://www.opentextbooks.org.hk/ditatopic/10415) is required.
3. Mechanization: “Machine Tools were designed specifically for each operation. Robbins & Lawrence’s contract for the Enfield machinery included universal millers, standard millers, doublemillers, screw millers, clamp millers, four-spindle drillers and machines for tapping, edging, grooving, squaring, threading, chucking, broaching, saw-slotting, screw-pointing, screw-clipping, punching, index-milling, turning and rifling,” said Edwin A Battison in his book “From Muskets to Mass Production.”
4. Machines as a Resource: In his report to Parliament in 1854, a British commissioner stated that Americans use machinery whenever possible. “Wherever it can be introduced as a substitute for manual labor, it is universally and willingly resorted to.” Additionally, “the returns on \[machinery investments\] are calculated not merely in the narrow sense of money but in the wider sense of adding to the firm’s general resources and improving the working conditions of the staff.” *(Freight Handling,* 49, 50., cited in [The Social Basis of the American System of Manufacturing.](http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/sawyer.html) )

David Hounshell states in his book [“From the American System to Mass Production”](https://www.amazon.com/American-System-Mass-Production-1800-1932/dp/080183158X/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&qid=1609192249&refinements=p_27%3ADavid+A.+Hounshell&s=books&sr=1-1) that the term “American System” was more often used in retrospect, looking back at the 1800s, than it was used at the time.

### The Armory: 1866–1964

The building operated as a cotton mill beginning in 1866 for nearly two decades, before returning to manufacturing machine tools in 1888. Ten years later the property was sold to the Windsor Electric Light Company, before being sold to the Central Vermont Public Service Company in 1926. In 1964, CVPS proposed razing the building, prompting Smithsonian curator and Windsor resident, Ed Battison to formulate plans for the creation of a museum. Battison had a relationship with CVPS, storing various items in the building since the 1950s.

[![The armory, circa late 1960s. Note the garage door and the covered truck entrance around to the right, used when the building was owned by Central Vermont Public Service Co. Windsor resident and Smithsonian curator Ed Battison acquired the building in 1964 when it was threatened with demolition.](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1960s-1.jpg)](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/1960s-1.jpg)
*The armory, circa late 1960s. Note the garage door and the covered truck entrance around to the right, used when the building was owned by Central Vermont Public Service Co. Windsor resident and Smithsonian curator Ed Battison acquired the building in 1964 when it was threatened with demolition.*

### American Precision Museum Founder, Ed Battison

Windsor native Edwin A. Battison founded the American Precision Museum in 1966 and served as its director until 1991. Battison, a curator of Mechanical Engineering at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution, secured the Robbins & Lawrence Armory to house the museum and the world-class collection of historic machine tools, related books, and archival materials he had collected during his lifetime.

[![South wall of the museum, shows crowd during the museum's first day](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/south-wall-opening-day-1966.jpg)](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/south-wall-opening-day-1966.jpg)
*South Wall – Opening Day – 1966*

### A New Era

In 1999, new leadership began professionalizing the operations, preserving the physical assets, and marketing to a wider audience. APM undertook a major restoration effort, installing a new slate roof, completing interior structural repairs, restoring two-thirds of the historic wood windows, re-wiring the building, updating security and fire detection systems, and launching a masonry restoration program.

[![The amory building in teh late 1990s](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/north-east.jpg)](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/north-east.jpg)
*American Precision Museum – late 1990’s*

### Shaping America: Machines and Machinists at Work

This 4,000 square-foot exhibition focuses on the people whose work made great societal changes possible and the rise of the “American System” of manufacturing. *“Shaping America”* is the first comprehensive exhibition to examine Vermont’s industrial history in-depth and explores the broad themes of innovation and problem solving, craftsmanship, and the influence of precision manufacturing upon American history and culture. Precision manufacturing reinforced the growth of the American middle class and laid the foundation for the consumer culture that developed during the 19th and 20th centuries.

![The shaping america exhibition in the museum's main gallery](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/DSC1903hdrPC-Copy-300x202.jpg)
*The Shaping American Exhibition*

***Generous support from the National Endowment for the Humanities helped make this exhibition possible.***

### Windsor, Vermont and Precision Manufacturing

Windsor, Vermont, the home of the American Precision Museum, played an important role in the development of precision manufacturing and the machine tool industry in America. The Robbins & Lawrence armory served as a breeding ground for innovation in the mid-19th century and as a center for excellence in the high tech industry of its day. Military leaders and industrialists traveled to Windsor to learn about the new “American System” of manufacturing, and workers from Windsor were aggressively recruited by other emerging industries. By continually increasing productivity, the machine tool industry spread the notion that material abundance was possible for a broad cross section of the American people. At its full maturity in the mid 20th century, the machine tool industry provided the backbone of American industrial strength and helped the United States develop into a world power.

### Collection and Archives

The museum’s holdings include an unparalleled collection of industrial machinery spanning the first one hundred years of precision manufacturing, along with fine examples of early machined products including rifles, sewing machines, and typewriters. Photographs and archival records provide additional resources for interpreting this critical phase of the Industrial Revolution.

![Looper Sewing machine from our collection](https://americanprecision.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/DSC1687c-300x204.jpg)