In April, 1917, there were probably not more than a dozen recognized American manufacturers of high-grade precision instruments. As an indication of the expansion of manufacturing capacity required by the war, one concern, the Taylor Instrument Cos., of Rochester, N. Y., which had manufactured in peace times watch-pocket compasses at the rate of 15,000 a year, were called upon to turn them out at the rate of 10,000 weekly to fill an order for 200,000 of them. In order to handle this contract the Taylor Instrument Cos. built a new factory building in 20 days. A certain type of aneroid barometer required by the exigencies had never before been produced in America. The Taylor Instrument Cos. succeeded in producing 1,240 of these barometers.
The Lufkin Rule Co., of Saginaw, Mich., was called upon to manufacture 700 band chain measuring tapes for surveying, graduated throughout according to the metric system, and also 1,240 special outfits for repairing such tape. These band tapes when broken are fastened together by tiny rivets, which are produced by special machinery. Because of the inability of the machine-tool industry, swamped as it was with war demands, to produce the special rivet-making machines, it was necessary to reduce in the specifications for repair outfits the quantity of metal rivets for each kit from 4 ounces of rivets to 2 ounces.
Field artillery required a precision instrument known as the miniature telescopic alidade of the Gale type. It is unlikely that 150 of these instruments had been made in the United States during 10 years, yet the Artillery demands called for the production of 1,110 of them. The W. & L. E. Gurley Co., of Troy, N. Y., not only manufactured half of this order, but, in order that the Government might obtain a sufficient supply of these instruments, it turned over to a competing firm, the Eugene Dietzgen Co., of Chicago, the lenses, prisms, hermetically-sealed bubbles, and other parts for 555 instruments.
The Army required large numbers of hand tally registers to be used by checkers and observers. The Benton Manufacturing Co., of New York, had been making less than 15,000 registers of this sort in a year, yet it increased its facilities and turned out 62,000 of them for the Army within two months.
The Army required 35,000 complete sketching outfits for the use of military observers. The contents of these outfits were manufactured by a dozen different concerns.
Drawing instrument sets were produced by the Eugene Dietzgen Co. Each set included a pair of proportional dividers. Our draftsmen had always obtained their dividers from Europe. The divider, which nearly everyone has seen, appears to be a simple device, yet it must be made with the utmost precision, or else it is valueless. In manufacture it goes through more than 100 distinct factory operations.
Marching compasses for troops were made by the Sperry Gyroscope Co., of Brooklyn, N. Y., the quantity in manufacture being over 200,000 instruments.
Many other delicate instruments of most difficult manufacture, whose description is too technical to be set down here, were produced successfully in America during the war period.
DERRICK TRUCK FOR OVERSEAS USE.