E. P. Bullard, like Gleason, worked at both Colt’s and Pratt & Whitney’s. Later he formed a partnership with J. H. Prest and William Parsons, manufacturing millwork and “all kinds of tools” in Hartford. In 1866 he organized the Norwalk Iron Works Company of Norwalk, but afterwards withdrew and continued the business in Hartford. For a number of years Mr. Bullard was in the South and Middle West, at Athens, Ga., at Cincinnati, where he organized the machine tool department of Post & Company, and at Columbus, where he was superintendent of the Gill Car Works. In 1875 he established a machinery business in Beekman Street, New York, under the firm name of Allis, Bullard & Company. Mr. Allis withdrew in 1877 and the Bullard Machine Company was organized. Recognizing a demand for a high grade lathe he went to Bridgeport, Conn., and engaged A. D. Laws to manufacture lathes of his design, agreeing to take his entire output. In the latter part of the same year Mr. Bullard took over the business and it became the Bridgeport Machine Tool Works. In 1883 he designed his first vertical boring and turning mill, a single head, belt feed machine of 37 inches capacity. This is believed to be the first small boring machine designed to do the accurate work previously performed on the face plate of a lathe. Up to that time boring machines were relied on only for large and rough work. In 1889 he transferred his New York connections to J. J. McCabe and gave his entire attention to manufacturing, the business being incorporated as the Bullard Machine Tool Company in 1894. The building of boring mills gradually crowded out the lathes, and for twenty years the company has concentrated on the boring machine as a specialty. In their hands it has received a remarkable development. They introduced a range of small-sized mills capable of much more accurate work than had been done on this type of machine. They applied the turret principle to the head carried on the cross rail and a few years later introduced a mill having a head carried on the side of the frame which permitted of the close working of the tools. These improvements transformed the boring mill into a manufacturing machine, and it became practically a vertical turret lathe with the advantages inherent in that type of machine. This trend toward the lathe type has finally resulted in a multiple station-type of machine which is in effect a vertical multi-spindle automatic chucking lathe with five independent tool heads, as shown in Fig. 56. Comparison of this with Fig. 15, shows how the lathe has developed in the 115 years since Maudslay introduced the slide-rest principle and the lead screw. CHAPTER XV ROBBINS & LAWRENCE