Jones and Lamson developed and evolved in Windsor, starting out as Robbins and Lawrence, early developers of what was called the “American System” of manufacturing. Basically the ability to mass produce machine parts so that each part is interchangeable with another. Up until this innovation, all machines, be they lathes or rifles or whatever, were individually hand made. The business moved to Springfield in about 1888, and built their first factory on Main Street (the present Senior Center). The larger facility (Plant #1) on Clinton Street was built sometime prior to World War I.

One of the early employees at Jones and Lamson was James Hartness; he was hired out of Massachusetts as a foreman, and became one of the main inventors of various products: the Hartness flat turret lathe, the Hartness Optical Comparator, and assorted thread cutting apparatus. Early in the company history appears the Fay Automatic Lathe, a cam-operated machine which at the time was hailed as a breakthrough in high production turning (this product was the result of a purchase agreement with the Fay Scott Company of Maine).

Several lines of grinding machines were developed over the years, including thread grinders, tap grinders and various form grinders (including one that ground the “Christmas tree” forms on jet turbine blades). I remember seeing a thick book at J&L which had manual drawings of these forms in enlarged views, their various angles and radii marked out. It baffled me at the time why so many variations were necessary, no two seemed alike. All the computations were done longhand, as there were no electronic calculators available at the time. We did have several  Friden mechanical calculators, and using those, and a seven place trig book I called “Hans Hof”, we could slowly get the job done. And of course the slide rule was still being used.

Another product line we had was the Optical Comparator. These were built in the lower plant after 1955 or so, and I really didn’t have any idea just what they consisted of. James Hartness, along with a fellow engineer by the name of Russell Porter, developed this product around 1920 or so.

Thread cutting die heads and taps, and a small precision lathe, rounded out the J&L product line.

So in summary, J&L had a very diversified product line. Which helped to “smooth out” workflow; when one product was down in sales, another may be up. And the sales of spare parts for all these machines was always lucrative. But the introduction of the TNC lathe, and its success, started a re-evaluation process that slowly ate away at this diverse product line. Management was forced to refocus our finite resources in space and manpower to the TNC lathe product line. The future would see J&L sell off or move some products out of town to make room for this.