The Hartford Special Machinery Company Complex is an industrial facility in the City of Harford, Connecticut developed from 1915 through 1960 by local entrepreneurs for the customized production of machinery and machine components that served as part of a critical supply chain for other industries. The complex consists of the Hartford Special Machinery Factory located at 287 Homestead Avenue and the Stanley P. Rockwell Company Factory Building located across the street at 296 Homestead Avenue. Both factories were initially constructed by the Hartford Special Machinery Company in 1915 and 1929, respectively and expanded multiple times in the following decades...
Founding partners Joseph Merritt (1868-1950), Ernest Walker Smith (1878-1926), and Herbert Knox Smith (1869-1931) established the Hartford Special Machinery Company in Hartford, Connecticut in 1912 with capital of $15,000 (Figures 5-7). Merritt, an independent mechanical engineer and inventor born in Greenwich, Connecticut initiated the business, with the financial backing of the Smith brothers. He gained experience in tool and automatic machinery design and manufacture over a period of about twenty years before opening his own mechanical and consulting engineering business under his name in Hartford in 1907. He previously apprenticed as a machinist at the Port Chester Bolt & Nut Company in Port Chester, New York, from 1886- 1889, producing machinery for making bolts and nuts. He then worked as a tool maker, draftsman and designer for a number of companies, including Pratt & Whitney in Hartford. During this period, Merritt gained experience in a variety of machinery, including type setting and justifying machines, cash registers, and machine guns. From 1899-1907 he served as the chief draftsman and designer for William A. Lorenz, a mechanical engineer and inventor in Hartford, where he produced original designs for automatic paper bag, food preparing, and rubber working machinery. He also invented new devices and processes with the goal of reducing manufacturing costs....
According to a retrospective report on the company in the Hartford Courant in 1954, which is confirmed by patent documentation, some of these products included machines that ground peanut butter, diced vegetables, stamped gold leaf designs onto shoe leather, made chain mesh for a short-lived fad in women’s handbags, and that polished talcum powder cans. 15 The 1916 article in the American Machinist mentioned above includes a photograph of automatic rifle parts manufactured in the shop, likely for the Colt Patent Firearms Company (Figure 20). In addition to building specific machines, the company also designed improved machine tools and manufacturing machinery that demonstrated a versatility of manufacturing potential; these were patented by Joseph Merritt and others (with the Hartford Special Machinery Company assignor) in the 1910s and 1920s and continued through the 1970s. Some of these patents included designs for improved drill chucks, metal links, variable speed transmissions, glass working apparatus, and ring forming tools and gages, among others...
An important expansion of the Hartford Special Machinery Company’s reach occurred in the 1930s and 1940s with the introduction of its own proprietary machinery. The first of these was the Hartford Super-Spacer, introduced in 1935 (Figure 32). This was a device that precisely positioned machine components during the manufacturing process. It was a highly versatile tool and could be used in milling, drilling, boring, planing and grinding work. Its reliability for accuracy allowed less-skilled machine operators to increase their productivity by working at faster speeds while relying on the spacer for precision. The company expanded its line of proprietary products in the late 1940s when it purchased the patents and manufacturing rights for the production of three types of machines from the Langelier Manufacturing Company of Cranston, Rhode Island. These rights were for drilling, automatic thread rolling, and die polishing machines, all of which were in demand by manufacturers seeking fast and economical production of machine parts, such as the General Motors Corporation...
After Joseph Merritt died in 1950, the Hartford Special Machinery Company continued its forward motion under the sons of two of the original founders, Robert P. Merritt (1911-2002), as president and Ernest W. Smith, Jr. (1915-2009) as executive vice-president. Robert Merritt, who began working as a machinist for the company in the early 1930s, spearheaded the development of the Hartford Super Spacer...
In 1955 the Hartford Special Machinery Company further expanded its line of proprietary products by purchasing a complete line of air hydraulic drilling units from the Rockwell Manufacturing Company in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania...
With the continued expansion of the business through the 1950s, the Hartford Special Machinery Company vacated its Homestead Avenue plant in 1960, moving all operations to its Simsbury location. The company continued to thrive into the 1970s. In 1980, the Hartford Special Machinery Company merged with the New England Machine & Tool Company and Page Co., two smaller companies based in Berlin, Connecticut, and became Hartford Special Inc. Despite the hopeful projections of the merger, recession and foreign competition ultimately forced liquidation of the company in 1983...