William Mason was another of those who helped make the Colt Armory what it was. He was a modest, kindly man, little known outside of his immediate associates, but of singular fertility in invention and almost unerring mechanical judgment. He learned his trade with the Remington Arms Company at Ilion, N. Y., and after a long association with them he was for sixteen years superintendent of the Colt Armory. In 1885 he became master mechanic of the Winchester Repeating Arms Company of New Haven, and held that position until his death in 1913. He had granted to him more than 125 patents, most of them in connection with arms and ammunition and tools for their manufacture, but they included many appliances for looms and weaving, steam pumps, and bridge work, and he assisted with the development of the Knowles steam pump and Knowles looms. Asa Cook, a brother-in-law of F. A. Pratt, was for years a foreman and contractor at Colt’s. He was afterwards a designer and manufacturer of machinery for making wood screws, bolt machinery and many other types of tools. George A. Fairfield, another Colt foreman, became superintendent of the Weed Sewing Machine factory and later president of the Hartford Machine Screw Company; another workman, A. F. Cushman, of the Cushman Chuck Company, for many years manufactured lathe chucks. In fact, there is hardly a shop in Hartford which dates from the seventies and eighties which does not trace back in some way to the Colt Armory. Its influence is by no means confined to Hartford, for such men as Bullard and Gleason carried its standards and methods to other cities. Four of the Colt workmen formed two partnerships of wide influence: Charles E. Billings and Christopher M. Spencer, who organized the Billings & Spencer Company, and Francis A. Pratt and Amos Whitney, of the Pratt & Whitney Company.