"john" wrote in message
...
Ed Huntress wrote:

"Stanley Dornfeld" wrote in message
...
This ought to get you started. *Smile

The question this group has been looking for a definitive answer for
is:
How did the "Letter" size drills come into being and why?

Now, a number of members in this group have made some good
contributions
in
support of the origin; but I don't think anyone has been able to
"rubber
stamp" the quest complete.

Maybe one of your students might take up the banner.

These references come from "Metalworking Yesterday and Tomorrow" The
100th
Anniversary Issue of American Machinist
The book was given to me by Pete Noling ,who sold me my first Hurco in
1/15/'79 Seaboard Machinery Los Angeles --

Take a look at the masthead, or at back of the issue, and see who the
editors were. g

I have a couple of copies, which are worth their weight in gold. But
I'll
let Errol have one for a while, if he wants to copy anything from it. I
wrote a number of the items in that history, mostly about the 1930's and
1940's.

Ed Huntress

Ed,

Maybe you should give a lecture. Danbury isn't that far.

John

Nah, I'm no expert on it. I was just one of a team of editors who researched
and put that history together. We each took a few slices of it and studied
them for a year or so.

A great deal of the research material was right in the building with us --
the collection of American Machinist magazines going back to 1877, and the
McGraw-Hill corporate library, which contained every important book
published on machining up to the early 1950s. McGraw-Hill published most of
those produced in the US up until that time, anyway.

And some of our editors knew the key people very well. Colvin had been an AM
editor himself at one time. Dick Moore used to come in for lunch. Parsons
was around from time to time. Andy Ashburn, who wrote much of the WWII
training material for machinists, was our Editor when I was there. And so
on. We had the living history right there with us.

The curators at the American Precision Museum in Vermont know more about it
than anyone alive. If you ever get up there, stop in. It's worth it.

Ed Huntress