The first government contract came in 1845. War with Mexico loomed up on the horizon. William Jencks had invented a carbine, and Uncle Sam wanted several thousand guns made in a hurry under the patent. A contract had been let to Ames & Co., of Springfield, Mass., and they had made special machinery for the job. Remington took over the contract and the machinery, added to his power, secured by putting in another water race, erected the building now known as the “Old Armory,” and made the carbines. In 1850 the art of gunmaking began to improve radically. The old lap-welded barrel gave way to the barrel drilled from solid steel. This was accomplished for the first time in America at the Remington plant, in making Harper’s Ferry muskets. Then followed the drilling of small-bore barrels from solid steel, the drilling of doubled-barrel shotguns from one piece of steel, the drilling of fluid steel and nickel steel barrels, all done for the first time in this country at the Ilion shops. Three-barrel guns were also made from one piece of steel, two bores for shot and the third rifled for a bullet. A customer wanted some special barrels with nine bores in a single piece of steel. These were made at Ilion, and the Remington plant soon became noted for its ability to bore almost anything in the shape of a gun, from the tiniest squirrel calibers up to boat guns weighing sixty pounds or more, which were really small caliber cannon. [Illustration: SHIPPING REMINGTONS IN THE EARLY DAYS] Between the time when Remington made his first rifle at Ilion Gulph and the outbreak of the Civil War, most of the basic things in machine tools had been adapted to general production--the slide-rest lathe, planer, shaper, drill press, steam hammer, taps and dies, the vernier caliper that enabled a mechanic at the bench to measure to one-thousandth of an inch, and so on. When Fort Sumter was fired upon, Uncle Sam turned to the Remington plant, among others, for help out of his dilemma of “unpreparedness.” The first contract was given for 5,000 Harper’s Ferry rifles, and it took two years to complete it. Five thousand Harper’s Ferry muskets came in to be changed so that bayonet or sabre could be attached, and this particular job was finished in two weeks, every man and boy in Ilion working at it. There was a big contract for army revolvers, and that had to be taken care of by starting a separate plant in Utica, which ran until the end of the war, when its machinery and tools were moved to Ilion. Steam power was now installed, and the plant, increased by new buildings and machinery, ran day and night. [Illustration: MASTER OF THE SITUATION The modern sportsman with his automatic rifle is prepared for all emergencies.]