Charles E. Billings

He was born in Weathersfield, Vermont, the son of Ethan F. and Clarissa M. (née Marsh) Billings.[1] He served his apprenticeship at Robbins & Lawrence in Windsor, Vermont.[2] Robbins & Lawrence was a factory and armory that was an important early node in the social network of the 19th century machine tool industry.[3]

In 1856, at the age of 21, he worked at the Colt armory in Hartford, Connecticut as a die sinker and tool maker and became their expert on the drop forging process.[2] In 1862, he went to E. Remington & Sons, where he built up their forging plant, increasing its efficiency and saving $50,000 by one improvement in frame forging alone.[2] At the end of the American Civil War, he returned to Hartford as the superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine Company, which had taken over the old Sharps Rifle Works, built by Robbins & Lawrence.[2]

In 1868, while at the Roper Repeating Arms Company in Amherst, Massachusetts, he worked with Christopher M. Spencer.[2] The Roper company failed and in 1869, the two founded a partnership in Hartford, Connecticut called Billings & Spencer,[2] which would manufacture sewing machines, drop-forged hand tools, and machine tools. Billings perfected a drop hammer for metal forging in the 1870s and designed the copper commutator which was central to the operation of electrical generators and motors.

In 1895, Billings was president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.[2]

He died on June 5, 1920 in Hartford, Connecticut and was interred at Cedar Hill Cemetery.[4]

• Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, LCCN 16011753. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-24075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois, (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).

• Biography from http://www.all-biographies.com/
• Connecticut inventors
• Charles E. Billings at Find a Grave