Ira & Ziba Gay was founded in 1830 as a partnership between two brothers. Upon the death of Ira in 1837, the firm reorganized as Gay, Silver & Co. with a new partner, Harvey Silver. When Ziba died in 1857, the firm was again reorganized as Silver, Gay & Co. with Ziba Gay Jr. as the new partner.
In 1825, Ira Gay was the chief mechanic of the Nashua Manufacturing Co., where he developed printing machinery. According to "The History of Manchester [NH]", an 1851 book by C. E. Potter, in 1831 Gay became the clerk of the newly formed Amoskeag Manufacturing Co. Gay received an 1836 patent for a planer of an interesting design. Planer knives were mounted on the beveled face of a large beveled disk, and the disk was placed underneath the planer's feed carriage. The disk's shaft was angled so that the knives were horizontal when they hit the underside of the stock to be planed. The knives thus took gently rounded cuts out of the stock. A pair of pressure rollers both fed the stock and held it firmly to the bed. Gay's design was markedly different from that of the Woodworth planer, but Woodworth was still able to stop its manufacture. Gay died 20 Aug 1837.
Ira Gay, son of Ebenezer Gay, was born October 17, 1790. He was married July 25, 1813, to Mary White, and they resided first at Pawtucket, Rhode Island, and afterwards in Nashua, New Hampshire. Ira Gay died August 20, 1837. His wife died October 15, 1865. Ira and Mary (White) Gay had thirteen children, and the parents and some of the children were members of the Olive Street Congregational Church in Nashua, New Hampshire. Ira Gay was a machinist and inventor. He possessed a mechanical genius of the first order, and made many valuable improvements in manufacturing machinery. For several years he was agent of the Nashua Manufacturing Company, and at the time of his death was a director of the Nashua and Lowell Railroad, and one of a committee to superintend the building of the road. He was the first clerk and one of the first directors of the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company of Manchester, New Hampshire.
Information Sources
- American Lathe Builders: 1810-1910 by Kenneth L. Cope, 2001 page 65
- The History of Manchester1851
- Historic homes and places and genealogical and personal memoirs 1908 Volume 1 page 235 by William Richard Cutter