hip's blocks. From no less an
authority than Thomas Jefferson we learn that a French mechanic had
previously conceived the same idea.* But, as no general result whatever
came from the idea in either France or England, the honors go to Whitney
and North, since they carried it to such complete success that it spread
to other branches of manufacturing. And in the face of opposition. When
Whitney wrote that his leading object was "to substitute correct and
effective operations of machinery for that skill of the artist which
is acquired only by long practice and experience," in order to make the
same parts of different guns "as much like each other as the successive
impressions of a copper-plate engraving," he was laughed to scorn by
the ordnance officers of France and England. "Even the Washington
officials," says Roe, "were sceptical and became uneasy at advancing so
much money without a single gun having been completed, and Whitney went
to Washington, taking with him ten pieces of each part of a musket.
He exhibited these to the Secretary of War and the army officers
interested, as a succession of piles of different parts. Selecting
indiscriminately from each of the piles, he put together ten muskets, an
achievement which was looked on with amazement."**

* See the letter from Jefferson to John Jay, of April 30,
1785, cited in Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p.
129.

** Roe, "English and American Tool Builders", p. 133.

While Whitney worked out his plans at Whitneyville, Simeon North,
another Connecticut mechanic and a gunmaker by trade, adopted the
same system. North's first shop was at Berlin. He afterwards moved to
Middletown. Like Whitney, he used methods far in advance of the time.
Both Whitney and North helped to establish the United States Arsenals
at Springfield, Massachusetts, and at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, in which
their methods were adopted. Both the Whitney and North plants survived
their founders. Just before the Mexican War the Whitney plant began
to use steel for gun barrels, and Jefferson Davis, Colonel of the
Mississippi Rifles, declared that the new guns were "the best rifles
which had ever been issued to any regiment in the world." Later, when
Davis became Secretary of War, he issued to the regular army the same
weapon.

The perfection of Whitney's tools and machines made it possible to
employ workmen of little skill or experience. "Indeed so easy did Mr.
Whitney