1 et seq.
So it was in the shops of the New England gunmakers that machine tools were first made of such variety and adaptability that they could be applied generally to other branches of manufacturing; and so it was that the system of interchangeable manufacture arose as a distinctively American development.

We have already seen how England's policy of keeping at home the secrets of her machinery led to the independent development of the spindles and looms of New England.

The same policy affected the tool industry in America in the same way and bred in the new country a race of original and resourceful mechanics.
One of these pioneers was Thomas Blanchard, born in 1788 on a farm in Worcester County, Massachusetts, the home also of Eli Whitney and Elias Howe.

Tom began his mechanical career at the age of thirteen by inventing a device to pare apples.

At the age of eighteen he went to work in his brother's shop, where tacks were made by hand, and one day took to his brother a mechanical device for counting the tacks to go into a single packet.