The Bullard Machine Tool Company was a large American machine tool–building firm. It specialized in vertical boring mills and was largely responsible for the development of the modern form of that class of machine tools.
The firm was founded in 1894 by Edward Payson Bullard Sr (born 1841-04-18 in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, USA; died 1906-12-22 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA). He received formative experience at the Colt armory and Pratt & Whitney, which were influential development centers for generations of toolmakers. Bullard Sr is believed to have developed the first small boring machine designed to do the accurate work previously performed on the faceplate of a lathe. Roe (1916) says that "Up to that time boring machines were relied on only for large and rough work."
Bullard Sr's son, Edward Payson Bullard Jr (1872–1953), continued the family machine tool business and brought the turret principle to the vertical boring mill, making it a vertical turret lathe. For a while in America during the 20th century, the name "Bullard" on the shop floor was something of a genericized trademark for vertical turret-head boring mills. E.P. Bullard Jr led the development of the company's multiple-spindle Mult-Au-Matic brand machine that became an important automatic lathe in the mass production of parts for the automotive industry. Bullard Jr was president of the company for 40 years, through World War I, the interwar period, and World War II, a period during which the Bullard company was the largest machine tool builder in the U.S., and vast volumes of military matériel were produced by countless companies running Bullard machines.
Famous quotes containing the words machine, tool and/or company:
“The machine invades me all day.”
—Sharon Atkins, U.S. receptionist. As quoted in Working, book 2, by Studs Terkel (1973)
“And if thou wilt make me an altar of stone, thou shalt not build it of hewn stone: for if thou lift up thy tool upon it, thou hast polluted it.”
—Bible: Hebrew Exodus 20:25.
“Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)