The Ferracute Machine Company was founded by inventor

Oberlin Smith Oberlin Smith (March 22, 1840 – July 19, 1926) was an American engineer who published one of the earliest works dealing with magnetic recording in 1888. Biography He was born on March 22, 1840, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to George R. and Salome (Kemp ...

Bridgeton, New Jersey Bridgeton is a city in Cumberland County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It is the county seat of Cumberland County magnetic recording Magnetic storage or magnetic recording is the storage of data on a magnetized medium. Magnetic storage uses different patterns of magnetisation in a magnetizable material to store data and is a form of non-volatile memory. The information is ac ...

. Oberlin Smith's ideas in magnetic recording were used by

Valdemar Poulsen Valdemar Poulsen (23 November 1869 – 23 July 1942) was a Danish engineer who made significant contributions to early radio technology. He developed a magnetic wire recorder called the telegraphone in 1898 and the first continuous wave radio ...

when he developed magnetic recording successfully.

History

Ferracute Machine Company initially started out as a

machine shop A machine shop or engineering workshop (UK) is a room, building, or company where machining, a form of subtractive manufacturing, is done. In a machine shop, machinists use machine tools and cutting tools to make parts, usually of metal or plast ...

but it eventually went on to produce

metal forming Forming, metal forming, is the metalworking process of fashioning metal parts and objects through mechanical deformation; the workpiece is reshaped without adding or removing material, and its mass remains unchanged. Forming operates on the mater ...

presses. Early presses were manufactured to make tin cans but eventually the larger Ferracute presses were used extensively to produce automobile parts for

Cadillac The Cadillac Motor Car Division () is a division of the American automobile manufacturer General Motors (GM) that designs and builds luxury vehicles. Its major markets are the United States, Canada, and China. Cadillac models are distributed i ...

Packard Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958. One of the "Thr ...

Pierce Pierce may refer to: Places Canada * Pierce Range, a mountain range on Vancouver Island, British Columbia United States * Pierce, Colorado * Pierce, Idaho * Pierce, Illinois * Pierce, Kentucky * Pierce, Nebraska * Pierce, Texas * Pierce, We ...

Chrysler Stellantis North America (officially FCA US and formerly Chrysler ()) is one of the " Big Three" automobile manufacturers in the United States, headquartered in Auburn Hills, Michigan. It is the American subsidiary of the multinational automoti ...

Ford Ford commonly refers to: * Ford Motor Company, an automobile manufacturer founded by Henry Ford * Ford (crossing), a shallow crossing on a river Ford may also refer to: Ford Motor Company * Henry Ford, founder of the Ford Motor Company * Ford F ...

and others.The Lemelson Center/Smithsonian Institution
"Ferracute Machine Company Records"
retrieved 2011-01-05 In 1910 Ferracute produced 39 presses for Ford's Highland Park plant.

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. The company sells automobi ...

eventually purchased almost 500 Ferracute presses between 1914 and 1917 for the war effort.Hagley Library
"Ferracute Machine Company Record"
retrieved 2011-01-05. Ferracute produced presses for

Baldwin Locomotive Works The Baldwin Locomotive Works (BLW) was an American manufacturer of railroad locomotives from 1825 to 1951. Originally located in Philadelphia, it moved to nearby Eddystone, Pennsylvania, in the early 20th century. The company was for decades t ...

General Electric General Electric Company (GE) is an American multinational conglomerate founded in 1892, and incorporated in New York state and headquartered in Boston. The company operated in sectors including healthcare, aviation, power, renewable energ ...

as well as for munitions plants in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

and

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. Under Oberlin Smith's direction, Ferracute Machine Company was progressive and he was always looking for the cutting edge applications for his presses. He traveled to

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

often to seek opportunities. With this goal in mind he produced presses to mint coins; one of his customers was the

U.S. Mint The United States Mint is a bureau of the Department of the Treasury responsible for producing coinage for the United States to conduct its trade and commerce, as well as controlling the movement of bullion. It does not produce paper money; that ...

. In 1897, engineer Henry A. Janvier went to China to install three presses in the Imperial Chinese mint. In 1909, Ferracute installed the first electric presses in La Casa de Moneda (the mint) of Potosi, Bolivia - one of the oldest and largest mints of the Americas, first established during the Spanish colonial period in 1572.

Sale

In 1937 Ferracute was sold to George E. Bass. With the advent of the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Ferracute once again became a major supplier of

machine tool A machine tool is a machine for handling or machining metal or other rigid materials, usually by cutting, boring, grinding, shearing, or other forms of deformations. Machine tools employ some sort of tool that does the cutting or shaping. All m ...

s, in the form of presses, to build munitions, aircraft components, and other war material. During World War II,

Frankford Arsenal The Frankford Arsenal is a former United States Army ammunition plant located adjacent to the Bridesburg neighborhood of Northeast Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, north of the original course of Frankford Creek. History Opened in 1816 on of land pu ...

became Ferracute's biggest customer. The governments of Britain and the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

turned to Ferracute for presses to help them in their domestic war production efforts.

Closure

After the war the business went into general decline until the company was finally closed in 1968. The factory headquarters caught fire on March 2, 2020, at 12:30 in the morning and burned down. The remains of the buildings were subsequently demolished.

References

{{Reflist

External links

* Oberlin Smith Biography http://www.ieeeghn.org/wiki/index.php/Oberlin_Smith * Canning in Nineteenth Century Delaware http://www.deldot.gov/archaeology/collins_geddes/pdf/collins_geddes_3.pdf
Imperial Chinese Mint 1898
in the

Hagley Digital Archives The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Pont ...

* Casa de Moneda, Potosi Bolivia http://www.casanacionaldemoneda.org.bo/ * New Jersey Historic Trust http://www.state.nj.us/dca/njht/funded/sitedetails/ferracute_machine_company.html * Preservation New Jersey http://www.preservationnj.org/site/ExpEng/index.php?/ten_most/archive_by_name_detail/2000/Ferracute_Machine_Company * New Jersey Pines and Down History https://web.archive.org/web/20110714185610/http://www.njpinelandsanddownjersey.com/open/index.php?module=documents&JAS_DocumentManager_op=viewDocument&JAS_Document_id=64
Ferracute Machine Company records
at

Hagley Museum and Library The Hagley Museum and Library is a nonprofit educational institution in unincorporated New Castle County, Delaware, near Wilmington. Covering more than along the banks of the Brandywine Creek, the museum and grounds include the first du Pont ...

Companies based in Cumberland County, New Jersey Bridgeton, New Jersey