What is it about?
During the American Civil War, the U.S. armory in Springfield, Mass. was the largest single supplier of rifles to Union forces. Armory workers out-produced over thirty American contractors. This article identifies and explains the factors in the Armory’s success.
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Why is it important?
The Springfield Armory rarely appears in Civil War histories except perhaps as an unexplained statistical wonder. This article identifies and explains the factors in the Armory’s success, provides context on contemporary American arms production and rifle models, and argues that the Armory’s methods and performance were among the first if not the first example of mass production in American small arms manufacture. The relative brevity of the Civil War episode, and the fact that it was not repeated in any comparable way at the Armory until World War II, has obscured its significance in American manufacturing history.
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I thank my colleagues Robert Gordon, Patrick Malone, and Carolyn Cooper for their advice and collaboration in preparing this article, and for years of work on Springfield Armory and many other topics in industrial history and archaeology.
MICHAEL RABER
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: “It would be impossible to estimate the value of these works...” Mass Production at Springfield Armory during the American Civil War, Arms & Armour, January 2017, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.1080/17416124.2017.1293882.
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