[179] _Ibid._, pp. 53-54. It took him a much longer time to fulfill the contract than he had anticipated; two years elapsed before his plant was ready. Only 500 guns were delivered the first year instead of 4000, and the entire contract required eight years instead of two from the time when he began actual manufacture. In spite of this delay he kept the confidence of the government officials, who were very liberal in their treatment of him; so much had been advanced to him to help him develop his machinery that when the contract was completed only $2450 out of the total of $134,000 remained to be paid. The work was highly satisfactory, and in 1812 he was awarded another contract for 15,000 muskets from the United States Government and one for a similar number from the State of New York. What is known of his methods and machinery is given in the chapter referred to, which shows also how they spread to other armories throughout the country. The business which Mr. Whitney started was carried on for ninety years. After his death in 1825 the armory was managed for ten years by Eli Whitney Blake, later inventor of the Blake stone crusher, and Philos Blake, his nephews. From 1835 to 1842 it was managed by ex-Governor Edwards, a trustee of Mr. Whitney’s estate. His son, Eli Whitney, Jr., then became of age and assumed the management, and that same year obtained a contract for making the “Harper’s Ferry” rifle,--the first percussion lock rifle, all guns before that date having had flint locks. Eli Whitney, Jr., continued to develop the art of gun making. He introduced improvements in barrel drilling and was the first to use steel for gun barrels. In 1847, during the Mexican War, Jefferson Davis, then a colonel in a Mississippi regiment, wrote to the Ordnance Department at Washington, that it was his opinion that the steel-barreled muskets from the Whitney armory were “the best rifles which had ever been issued to any regiment in the world.” The Whitney Arms Company supplied the Government with more than 30,000 rifles of this model. The company continued in existence until 1888, when the plant was sold to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company. It was operated by them for a number of years in the manufacture of 22-calibre rifles. This work was subsequently removed to their main works and the plant was sold to the Acme Wire Company, and later to the Sentinel Gas Appliance Company, its present owner. Some of the original buildings are still standing. It may be of interest to note that at the time the works were first built, a row of substantial stone houses was built by Whitney for his workmen, which are said to have been the first workmen’s houses erected by an employer in the United States.