While Lawrence continued as master-armorer of the Sharps Rifle Works, the company was successful financially. Fitch, in the Census article frequently referred to, says that he brought with him “from Windsor the first plain milling machine used in Hartford.” Lawrence also applied the broaching process to the manufacture of Sharps rifles, effecting great economies, and was the inventor of the split pulley which was first made for him at Lincoln’s Phœnix Iron Works. In the winter of 1850 Lawrence introduced the practice of lubricating rifle bullets with tallow, making possible the repeating rifle which had been a failure up to that time as the barrel “leaded” and the gun lost its accuracy. This was done in connection with some trials of the Jennings rifle during the visit of Louis Kossuth, the Hungarian patriot, who was in this country for the supposed purpose of purchasing rifles.[186] Mr. Lawrence left the Sharps company in 1872 and was for many years an official in the city of Hartford, as Superintendent of Streets and on the Water and Fire Boards. He died in 1892. [186] See Appendix B. The Sharps Rifle Works, after Lawrence’s retirement, were bought by the Weed Sewing Machine Company, and later by the Pope Manufacturing Company, who extended it greatly for the manufacture of the Columbia bicycle. Frederick W. Howe, the second of the Robbins & Lawrence mechanics mentioned, whose portrait appears in Fig. 39, learned his trade in the old Gay & Silver shop at North Chelmsford. We have seen in a previous chapter the connection of this company, through Ira Gay, with the early mechanics at Pawtucket. It is an interesting and perhaps significant fact that both milling machines and turret lathes were in use in this shop, probably at the time when Howe worked there. Howe was first a draftsman and later superintendent at Windsor and was intimately associated with the designing there at that time. The Jones & Lamson Machine Company still have drawings of machine tools made by him as early as 1848. As both Lawrence and Howe were designing in the Windsor shop at that period, it is difficult today to apportion the credit between them.