In 1840 (not 1830 as many sources claim) Simon Fairman patented the first hand-operated scroll lathe chuck. In 1848 Fairman's patent chuck was being manufactured by Oliver Snow & Co.; by 1856 the chuck was manufactured by J. W. Fairman & Co. In 1862 machinist Austin F. Cushman—who happened to be Simon Fairman's son-in-law—borrowed money from Samuel Woodruff of Woodruff & Beach Iron Works, bought a small lathe, set it up with foot power in a bedroom of his tenement, and began making scroll chucks based on Fairman's patent. Cushman made improvements to the design, as seen in his 1865 patent. Between 1862 and the 1885 incorporation, the business was operated as A. F. Cushman.

Cushman worked long hours making small (3 and 4 inches diameter) chucks which he took to New York City and sold in boxes of a dozen. Within four years he had moved to separate premises and employed about ten men. By 1881 he had at least two dozen men working for him and had annual revenues of $25,000. By 1885 those numbers had doubled again. By this time his son, Eugene L. Cushman, had joined him in the business, and in 1885 they incorporated as the Cushman Chuck Co. They had a capital stock of $80,000 divided over 800 shares. The two Cushmans took 799 shares and gave one to their superintendent, Adrian P. Sloan, which entitled him to be a company director. Despite the incorporation, the business continued to operate exactly as before: there were no stockholders' or directors' meetings, and the Cushmans ceded no control to Sloan.

Sloan proved to be a great innovator in improving manufacturing efficiency. The Cushmans chose not to patent any of Sloan's improvements but rather protected them as trade secrets. Adrian's son, Harry E. Sloan, also worked for the business and he generated improvements even more valuable than those of his father. The result was that Cushman Chuck Co.'s manufacturing costs were substantially below those of their competitors, and the company became the dominant manufacturer of scroll chucks in America. The company also made other products such as face plates and drill chucks but the lathe scroll chucks accounted for most of their revenues and nearly all of their profits.

A. F. Cushman refused to give more equity to Adrian P. Sloan but promised that his will would contain a "substantial bequest of stock in recognition of the latter's services on behalf of his employers." Cushman died in 1914 and there was no will, so the entirety of his estate went to his son Eugene. Once Eugene was made aware of the breached promise, he gave Austin 100 shares and Harry 25 share of the business. The Cushmans, in paying their taxes, had never assigned any value to the Sloans' innovations, and as a result the Board of Tax Appeals did not allow Eugene Cushman to declare the transfer of shares to the Sloans as a business expense. But the record of testimony has provided considerable insight into the operation of the business that would otherwise have been lost.

Information Sources

• October 1855 The Plough, the Loom, and the Anvil lists businesses in West Stafford, CT, including the following: "Machine-Shop of S. Fairman, has 3 lathes and other tools. Make patent universal chucks. / Machine-Shop of J. W. Fairman & Co., has 3 lathes and other tools. Make Fairman's patent scroll chuck."
• 1917 book, Heroic Willards of '76: Life and Times of Captain Reuben Willard contains quite a bit of genealogical data, some of which seems inconsistent with other evidence.
• September 1922 American Machine and Tool Record. "Simon Fairman, a workman in the mills [of Stafford, CT], conceived the idea of a crude Scroll chuck, which was operated by revolving the scroll by hand and in some cases getting the final grip with a pin inserted in a hole in the scroll plate to give additional leverage. In the early designs a chuck was not required to do much more than simply center the work. In many cases for holding the work, the jaws were made with set screws in each jaw so that after the work was centered the real grip could be obtained by using the set screws. Shortly after he invented this chuck, Fairman started a little shop of his own for making them, which business was later carried on by his son-in-law, who later sold it out and the chuck industry soon left Stafford, the place where it started."
• 1938 book, Connecticut; a Guide to Its Roads, Lore, and People. "In 1830, Simon Fairman from this township invented and secured a patent for a scroll lathe chuck embodying most of the principles now used in hand-operated chucks. The little backyard industrial plant gradually expanded until, in 1858, the owner was unable to finance himself further. Threatened with bankruptcy, the savings of years frozen in goods for which he could find no market, Fairman was saved by a Yankee tin-peddler who turned machinery salesman and marketed the entire output."
• A 1927 decision of the United States Board of Tax Appeals provides unusual insight into the operation of the Cushman Chuck Co. and its competitors. There are revenue numbers for Cushman Chuck Co., Skinner Chuck Co., Westcott Chuck Co., and E. Horton & Son Co. In addition there is a brief history that provides the year of incorporation (1885).
• From a 1951 issue of Western Machinery and Steel World. to the manufacture of lathe chucks. Eli Horton, having worked closely with Simon Fairman, who patented the first universal chuck in 1834, had foreseen the growing demand for holding devices. He began by producing his own universal chuck, but soon was making a variety of 2, 3 and 4-jaw chucks. As time went by, the Horton Company earned an international reputation with their excellent chucks, winning awards both here and abroad. Today the E. Horton & Son Company maintains its long established reputation."
• 1995-01-27 Hartford Courant article on the liquidation of the Cushman Industries Inc. "The auction was one of the last acts in Cushman's long slide into bankruptcy and liquidation. The Cushman product lines are being absorbed into the operations in Michigan of DeVlieg-Bullard Inc., a Westport-based toolmaker that last summer won approval of a plan in federal bankruptcy court to liquidate Cushman's assets. ...he saw little evidence that Cushman had done much to modernize in its last years. Many of the machines up for sale, he said, dated from the 1940s and 1950s." The star of the auction, though, was an Okuma CNC horizontal machining center that sold for $88,000 including buyer's premium.
• More history and product information can be found at a Cushman Industries archived web page.