In the same line of inventions there appeared in the first decade of the century one of the most ingenious of men, and a most fitting type of that great class of Yankee inventors who have carved their way to renown with all implements, from the jack-knife to the electrically-driven universal shaping machine. Thomas Blanchard, born in Massachusetts in 1788, while a boy, was accustomed to astonish his companions by the miniature wind-wheels and water-wheels that he whittled out with his knife. While attending the parties of young people who gathered on winter evenings at different homes in the country to pare apples, the idea of a paring machine occurred to him, and when only thirteen years of age, he invented and made the first apple-paring machine, with which more apples could be pared in a given time than any twelve of his girl acquaintances could pare with a knife. At eighteen, while working in a shop, driving the heads down on tacks, on an anvil, with a hammer, he invented the first tack-forming machine, which, when perfected by him, made five hundred tacks a minute, and which has never since been improved in principle. He improved the steam engine, and invented one of the first envelope machines. He made the first metal lathe for cutting out the butts of gun-barrels. But his greatest triumphs were in wood-working machinery. Challenged to make a machine that would make a gun stock, always before that time regarded an impossible task, its every part being so irregular in form, he secluded himself in his workshop for six months, and after constant labour and experiments he at the end of that time had produced a machine that more than astonished the entire world, and which worked a revolution in the making of all irregular forms from wood. This was in 1819. This machine would not only make a perfect gun-stock, but shoe lasts, and ships’ tackle-blocks, axe-handles, and a multitude of irregular-shaped blocks which before had always required the most expert hand operatives to produce. This machine became the subject of parliamentary inquiry on the part of England, and so great were the doubts concerning it, that successive commissions were appointed to examine and report upon it. Finally the English government ordered eight or ten of such machines for the making of gun-stocks for its army, and paid Blanchard about $40,000 for them. He was once jestingly asked at the navy department at Washington if he could turn a seventy-four? He at once replied, “Yes, if you will furnish me the block.” Of course infringers appeared, but he maintained his rights and title as first and original inventor after the most searching trials in court.