“Instead of confining himself to the ordinary process of gun-making by manual labour, Mr. Bodmer invented and successfully applied a series of special machines by which the various parts--more especially those of the lock--were shaped and prepared _for immediate use_, so as _to insure perfect uniformity_ and to _economise labour_. Amongst these machines there was also a planing machine on a small scale; and Mr. Bodmer has been heard to observe how strange it was that it should not have occurred to him to produce a larger machine of the same kind, with a view to its use for general purposes.”[72] He does not seem to have used the process of milling until much later. Bodmer was thus among the first to discern and to realize many of the possibilities of interchangeable manufacture, Eli Whitney having begun the manufacture of firearms on the interchangeable basis at New Haven, Conn., about 1800, only a few years before. Why Bodmer’s attempt should have failed of the influence which Whitney’s had is not quite clear. A possible explanation may lie in the fact that the use of limit gauges does not seem to have been a part of Bodmer’s plan. This use was recognized by the American gun makers as an essential element in the interchangeable system almost from the start. [72] _Ibid._, p. 576. (The italics are ours.) Bodmer was appointed, by the Grand Duke of Baden, director of the iron works and military inspector with the rank of captain and for a number of years much of his energy was given to the development of small arms and field artillery. He invented and built a 12-pound breech-loading cannon in 1814, which he had tested by the French artillery officers. It failed to satisfy them, and was sent a few years later to England, where it was decently buried by the Board of Ordnance. The following year he built a flour-mill at Zurich for his brother. Instead of each set of stones being driven by a small waterwheel, all the machinery connected with the mill was driven by a single large wheel through mill gearing. The millstones were arranged in groups of four. “Each set could be started and stopped separately, and was besides furnished with a contrivance for accurately adjusting the distance between the top and bottom stones. By means of a hoist of simple construction, consisting in fact only of a large and broad-flanged strap-pulley and a rope-drum, both mounted on the same spindle (the latter being hinged at one end, so that it could be raised and lowered by means of a rope), the sacks of grain or flour could be made to ascend and to descend at pleasure, and the operatives themselves could pass from one floor to any other by simply tightening and releasing the rope.[73] The shafting of this mill was made of wrought iron, and the wheels, pulleys, hangers, pedestals, frames, &c., of cast iron, much in accordance with modern practice.”[74] This was several years before Fairbairn and Lillie began their improvements at Manchester.