Brown & Sharpe and the Measure of American Industry ─ Making the Precision Machine Tools That Enabled Manufacturing, 1833?001

Joseph Brown, founder of Browne & Sharpe, was a skilled clockmaker turned mechanical designer who invented new machines, and new ways to make things, as needed. Samuel Darling, an eccentric inventor from Maine and a one-time competitor of Brown’s, joined the firm and brought with him his prized dividing engine for marking precise graduations on measuring instruments. Lucian Sharp, with his son Henry and grandson Henry, Jr., guided the company for more than a century—and along with it the global machine tools industry. The skilled men and women who worked for Brown & Sharpe, who produced and marketed a dazzling array of measuring devices, machine tools and precision machinery, truly helped shape Rhode Island, the nation and the modern world as we know it. The history of Brown & Sharpe contains the story of the Industrial Revolution in America, covering more than 150 years of technological development, labor history and public policy, culminating in history’s longest strike.

Gerald M. Carbone completed a John S. Knight Fellowship at Stanford University, and earned a master’s degree in public humanities at Brown University. This is his third book. He lives in Warwick, Rhode Island.