It has been claimed that the shop of Gage, Warner & Whitney, established by John H. Gage at Nashua in 1837, was the first one devoted exclusively to the manufacture of machine tools. If this is true, it does not involve as high a degree of specialization as would seem, for Bishop in 1860 says: “Their manufactures include iron planers of all sizes, engine lathes, from the smallest watch maker’s up to a size suitable for turning locomotive driving wheels six or eight feet in diameter, hand lathes of all sizes, chucking lathes of all dimensions, with sliding bed, bolt cutting machines for rapidly transforming any part of a plain bolt into a nice, evenly threaded screw, upright and swing drills, boring machines for shaping the interior of steam cylinders, or other bores of large diameter, slabbers of all kinds, gear-cutting engines of all sizes for shaping and smoothing the teeth of gear wheels with perfect accuracy, power punching machines of various sizes, etc.”[196] In 1852 they began building steam engines. With all this formidable list, it seems never to have been a very large shop. [196] “History of American Manufactures,” Vol. III, p. 451. In 1825 the improvement of the water power at what is now Lowell was begun. Almost at the very beginning of this development work, a large machine shop was built and placed under the charge of Paul Moody, who was regarded as one of the foremost mechanics of his day and was an expert in cotton machinery. This shop was retained by the Water Power Company for nearly twenty years, when it was sold (1845) and reorganized as the Lowell Machine Shop under Burke’s leadership. It employed at times one thousand men, and became one of the most important shops in the whole Merrimac Valley. James B. Francis, the great hydraulic engineer, began his life work as a draftsman here in 1833; and later Bement became its chief draftsman, leaving it to go to Philadelphia. From 1820 to 1840, other shops sprang up in the Merrimac Valley, such as C. M. Marvel & Company, of Lowell, the Lawrence Machine Shop, and the Essex Machine Shop, where Amos Whitney, of Pratt & Whitney, learned his trade, almost all of them building textile machinery, as well as machine tools. The output of these shops showed little specialization. They built almost anything which they could sell.