A year later they moved to Fitchburg and began repairing cotton machinery. At first they did their work entirely themselves, but their business increased rapidly and they soon hired an apprentice. Their first manufactured product was a gear cutter. This gave them a start and they soon developed a full line of standard tools. Though he was the younger brother, S. W. Putnam was the leading spirit. He first built upright drills with a swinging table so that the work could be moved about under the drill without unclamping. He designed the present form of back rest for lathes, and is said to have invented the universal hanger. The latter invention, however, has been claimed for several other mechanics in both England and America. In 1849 the brothers were burned out, without insurance. They repaired their machinery, built a temporary shed over it, and were at work again in two weeks. The present company was formed in 1858. The Putnam company has been influential in other lines than machine tools. Putnam engines were for many years among the best known in the country, and the company was also intimately concerned with the early development of the rock drill, through Charles Burleigh, the head of their planer department and the inventor of the Burleigh drill. In fact, the first successful drills, those for the Hoosac tunnel, together with the compressors, were designed and built in the Putnam shops. Sylvester Wright, who founded the Fitchburg Machine Works, was for ten years foreman of their lathe department, and most of the old mechanics in and about Fitchburg were Putnam men. Scattered here and there are other companies. At Nashua were Gage, Warner & Whitney, to which we have referred, and the Flather Manufacturing Company which was founded by Joseph Flather, an Englishman, in 1867. The Ames Manufacturing Company of Chicopee Falls came from the old Ames & Fisher shop at North Chelmsford. This was started by Nathan P. Ames, Senior, in 1791, who operated a trip hammer and other machinery, making edged tools and millwork. The shop was burned in 1810, and he moved to Dedham, Mass., for a year or so, but returned and resumed his former business on the old site. His sons, Nathan P., Jr., and James T., learned their trade with their father. The older brother, Nathan, moved to Chicopee Falls in 1829. James joined him in 1834. The Ames Manufacturing Company, formed the same year, lived for sixty years and employed at one time over a thousand men. From the start they had close relations with the Government and did an extensive business in all kinds of military supplies, swords, bayonets, guns, cannon, cavalry goods, etc. They cast bronze statuary, and the famous doors of the Capitol at Washington were made by them. They rivaled Robbins & Lawrence in gun machinery and shared with them the order for the Enfield Armory. This contract alone took three years to complete. Their gun-stock machinery went to nearly every government in Europe.