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| A very large Blanchard grinder sitting idle while the work piece is checked |
Founded in 1899 in Boston, MA, the company moved to Cambridge in 1904 after a fire. The company was relocated to Windsor Vermont in 1972 and was called Cone-Blanchard Machine Company at that time and made Cone automatic screw machines and Springfield vertical grinders. They left Windsor in 2002.
For a century, Blanchard grinders have been used to flatten surfaces, much faster than traditional surface grinders but to slightly looser tolerances. A video tour of the Bourdelais Grinding Shop shows several Blanchard grinders, including one 60-inch machine from the 1920s that is still in use.
Blanchard grinders are still being made Bourn & Koch Inc.
Around 1911, Blanchard made a short-lived foray into manufacturing gas engines.
Information Sources
- The Complete Guide to Stationary Gas Engines by Mark Meincke, 1996 page 97.
- More history and machine information can be found at the Cambridge Historical Society’s Industry in Cambridge web site.
- The tour of the Bourdelais Grinding Shop is by John Saunders of Saunders Machine Works.