Brown & Sharpe
The Brown & Sharpe company was a mechanical engineering company in North America in the 19th and 20th centuries . The company included the development and manufacture of tools such as milling machines and measuring equipment such as micrometers and dial gauges . Various common especially in the US industry standards go to the company back as the definition of wire diameters in the AWG system or machine components in the form of Brown & Sharpe - cone , similar to the usual in European machinery Morse taper .
history
The watchmaking company was founded in Providence , Rhode Island in 1833 by David Brown and his son Joseph Rogers Brown as David Brown & Son . Lucian Sharpe joined the company in 1848, and in 1853 it was renamed Brown & Sharpe . Joseph R. Brown was the inventor while Lucian Sharpe did the business part. The first universal milling machine was developed and manufactured in 1861 - at the time, the Union Army received orders for the manufacture of rifle barrels for use in the Civil War .
At the end of the 19th century, the workforce reached over 1,500 workers, the peak of over 11,000 employees was reached during the Second World War in 1943. The company's history is characterized by several strikes, some of which lasted for months, and significant changes in the level of employment. In the mid-1950s there was an international expansion, initially to England, and then mechanical engineering companies were bought up in several different European countries.
Brown & Sharpe ran into financial difficulties in early 2000 and was sold to the Hexagon group of companies. The name Brown & Sharpe continues to exist as a brand within the Hexagon Metrology division with a focus on a wide variety of products in the metrology field .
See also
literature
- Joseph Wickham Roe: English and American Tool Builders . Yale University Press, 1916 ( online ).
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Time line Brown & Sharpe. Retrieved March 11, 2013 .
- ^ Hexagon Metrology History. Retrieved March 11, 2013 .