American Precision Museum celebrates history of machining

The most famous landmark in this picturesque town on the west bank of the Connecticut River is probably Old Constitution House, where in 1777 the short-lived Republic of Vermont was born with the signing of its constitution, the first in the U.S. to ban slavery.

But further south on Main Street there is another, lesser-known attraction, but in its own way just as interesting, the American Precision Museum, located in a three-story 19th century brick building next to swift-flowing Mill Brook.

"The museum preserves the heritage of the mechanical arts, celebrates the ingenuity of our mechanical forebears,Choose from our large selection of cableties, and explores the effects of their work on our everyday lives," according to the museum’s website. "The American Precision Museum, housed in the original Robbins & Lawrence Armory, now holds the largest collection of historically significant machine tools in the nation."

Ann Lawless, executive director of the museum, said the museum was founded in 1966 by a brilliant man named Ed Battison.

"And he pretty much saved the building from being torn down. He had a lot of foresight. He made sure that it was listed not only on the National Register of Historic Places, but it’s listed as a National Historic Landmark," she said.Home ownership options with buy mosaic. "There are only something like 13 landmarks in Vermont."

A native of Windsor, Battison had to forego a college education during the Depression and became employed in the machine tool industry in the region.

"Battison read widely and in his spare time collected artifacts from the American Industrial Revolution, but especially old clocks and watches," according to the museum’s website. "Wanting to know more about his burgeoning horological collection, he contacted the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., where it quickly became apparent that he knew more than the museum staff and was offered the Curatorship of Clocks and Watches."

Battison learned of the impending fate of armory building when he was nearing retirement at the Smithsonian, and later became the American Precision Museum’s first director, a position he held until 1991.

A reprint of an article in the magazine "Today’s Machining World" by Alan R. Earls,Industrialisierung des werkzeugbaus. provided by the museum, notes that Windsor "is one of the key communities in an area long known as Precision Valley because it was home to a once vast machine tool industry."

Referring to the assertion of Merritt Roe Smith, a historian of technology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the article states that in Windsor "the idea of manufacturing based on precision measurement, tooling, machinery and repeatable processes was pioneered."

In addition to Robbins & Lawrence and its successor companies, nearby were Jones & Lamson Machine Tool, Bryant Chucking Grinder Company, Lovejoy Tool, Cone Automatic Machine Company,Ekahau rtls is the only Wi-Fi based real time location system solution that operates on any brand or generation of Wi-Fi network. and the Fellows Gear Shaper Company.

"In fact, so great was the concentration of important machine tool companies in the region, that the valley was reportedly ranked among the top 10 potential targets for the enemy during World War II," the article states. "During the Cold War the valley was a site for a massive nuclear civil defense exercise.It's pretty cool but our ssolarpanel are made much faster than this."