Honoré Blanc (died 1801) was a French gunsmith and a pioneer of the use of interchangeable parts.[1][2] His career spanned the decades from circa 1770 to 1801, a time period that included the reigns of Louis XV and Louis XVI, the American Revolution (which received military aid from Louis XVI), the French Revolution, and the French First Republic.
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Mass production innovation
In the middle of the eighteenth century Honoré le Blanc had worked out an approach to fabricating gun parts using allowable tolerances, which allowed any part from a production run to fit and function in any gun manufactured to the same system of tolerances. When he tried to interest fellow European craftsmen in the concept they were unreceptive, due to their fear that their employment and/or status might dwindle thereby. So le Blanc turned to Thomas Jefferson, at that time the American Ambassador to France; Jefferson quickly realized that such a system would free America from dependence on European sources for military equipment. Jefferson tried to persuade le Blanc to move to America, but was not successful, so he wrote to the American Secretary of War with the idea, and when he returned to the USA he worked to fund its development. President George Washington approved of the idea, and by 1798 a contract was issued to Eli Whitney for 12,000 muskets built under the new system.[3]
Blanc's work, and that of other French military officers led first by General Jean Baptiste Vaquette de Gribeauval and later by Major Louis de Tousard (who took his ideas with him into the newly established American military), formed the basis for the later development of interchangeable manufacture by the American military and its civilian contractors.[4] Thus Blanc was one of the inspirations for the achievements of Eli Whitney, who enjoys popular (oversimplified) fame for "inventing" interchangeable manufacture.
Roe (1916) mentions an unknown French inventor in whose work Thomas Jefferson took an interest circa 1785 and remembered years later as a "Mr Le Blanc".[5] Hounshell (1984) confirms that this inventor was Honoré Blanc.[2]
References
- ^ Althin 1948, p. 41
- ^ a b Hounshell 1984, pp. 25-26,41,348.
- ^ James Burke, Connections (Little, Brown and Co.), 1978/1995 ISBN 0-316-11672-6, p. 150
- ^ Hounshell 1984, pp. 25-32.
- ^ Roe 1916:129-130.
Bibliography
- Althin, Torsten K.W. (1948), C.E. Johansson, 1864–1943: The Master of Measurement, Stockholm: Ab. C.E. Johansson [C.E. Johansson corporation], LCCN 74-219452. Carl Edvard Johansson was the inventor of gauge blocks.
- Hounshell, David A. (1984), From the American system to mass production, 1800-1932: The development of manufacturing technology in the United States, Baltimore, Maryland, USA: Johns Hopkins University Press, LCCN 83-016269, ISBN 978-0-8018-2975-8.
- Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut, USA: Yale University Press, LCCN 16-011753, http://books.google.com/books?id=X-EJAAAAIAAJ&printsec=titlepage. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-024075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, IL, USA (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).
External links
- "Interchangeable Parts". John H. Lienhard. The Engines of Our Ingenuity. NPR. KUHF-FM Houston. 1997. No. 1252. Transcript.
- Massender, James (2002). ""No Undue Prejudice": Samuel Colt and the Politics of Uniformity" ([dead link] – Scholar search). Canadian Review of American Studies 32 (1). http://www.utpjournals.com/product/cras/321/Massender.html.
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