Captain John H. Hall

Information about Captain John H. Hall

John H. Hall (1781 – 1841) was the inventor of the M1819 Hall breech-loading rifle, and a mass production innovator.

Early life

Hall was born in 1781 in Portland, Maine. He worked in his father's tannery, then set up shop as a woodworker, machinist, and boat builder, but turned to the making of guns.

Career

In 1811 he devised and patented a breech-loading rifle. In 1819 he signed a contract with the War Department to produce 1,000 M1819 Hall rifles. Under the terms of the contract Hall came to Harpers Ferry Arsenal, where he occupied an old sawmill on a small island in the Shenandoah River. The site soon became known as Hall's Rifle Works, and the island was called Lower Hall Island.

As an inside contractor, Hall spent several years tooling new workshops and perfecting precision machinery for producing rifles with interchangeable parts – a boldly ambitious goal for an industry which was traditionally based on the manual labor of skilled craftsmen. Duing this time the Rifle Works served as a development laboratory for the Army's Ordnance Department. Hall's innovation and management allowed truly interchangeable parts to be produced on machines operated by boys.

Through twenty years of rifle production Hall continued to design and build innovative drop-hammers, stock-making lathes, balanced pulleys, drilling machines, and specialized machines for cutting metal. Hall's straight-cutting machine is the forerunner of modern milling machines. In 1826, friction between Hall and the Superintendent of the Armory led to a resolution in Congress calling for a study of the "fabrication, cost & utility" of Hall's rifles. The detailed report on Hall's machinery and precesses said, "Arms have never been made so exactly similar to each other by any other process. Machines we have examined effect this with a certainty and precision we should not have believed, till we witnessed their operation." Hall, not Eli Whitney, was the man who truly perfected the American system of manufacturing which eventually led to mass production.

After this, Hall's ideas spread rapidly to the Springfield Armory and other private armories. He devised gauging systems to maintain accuracy and when Simeon North began building Hall rifles in Connecticut, the gauging system insured that parts were interchangeable between rifles from the two armories.

Hall died in 1841.

Sources:

8th century - 9th century - 10th century
850s 860s 870s - 880s - 890s 900s 910s
885 886 887 - 888 - 889 890 891

:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
..... Click the link for more information.

18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1810s 1820s 1830s - 1840s - 1850s 1860s 1870s
1838 1839 1840 - 1841 - 1842 1843 1844

:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
..... Click the link for more information.

The M1819 Hall rifle was a single-shot breech loading rifle designed by Captain John H. Hall, patented on May 21 1811, and adopted by the U.S. Army in 1819. It used a falling breech design and was made with either flint-lock or percussion ignition systems.
..... Click the link for more information.

breech-loading weapon is a firearm (a rifle, a gun etc.) in which the bullet or shell is inserted or loaded at the rear of the barrel, or breech; the opposite of muzzle-loading.
..... Click the link for more information.

For the American band of the 1970s and 1980s, see .

Mass production (also called flow production, repetitive flow production, or series production) is the production of large amounts of standardized products on production lines.
..... Click the link for more information.

Portland, Maine
The skyline of downtown Portland, Maine

Flag
Nickname: The Forest City
Motto: Resurgam (Latin for "I will rise again")

Coordinates:
Country
..... Click the link for more information.

Tanning is the process of converting putrescible skin into non-putrescible leather, usually with tannin, an acidic chemical compound that prevents decomposition and often imparts color.
..... Click the link for more information.

Woodworking is the process of building, making or carving something using wood.

History

Along with stone, mud, and animal parts, wood was certainly one of the first materials worked by primitive human beings.
..... Click the link for more information.

machinist is a person who uses machine tools to make or modify parts, primarily metal parts. This is accomplished by using machine tools to cut away excess material such as a woodcarver cuts away excess wood to produce his work.
..... Click the link for more information.

Boat building, one of the oldest branches of engineering, is concerned with constructing the hulls of boats and, for sailboats, the masts, spars and rigging.

Portions

Each part of the hull has a different name and purpose:

..... Click the link for more information.

gun is a common name given to an object that fires high-velocity projectiles. The projectile is fired through a hollow tube known as the gun's barrel. The projectile's caliber is usually designated in fractions of an inch or in millimeters.
..... Click the link for more information.

United States Department of War was the department of the United States government's executive branch responsible for the operation and maintenance of land (and later air) forces from 1789 until September 18, 1947, when it became part of the National Military Establishment
..... Click the link for more information.

Harpers Ferry, West Virginia

Seal
Motto:
Coordinates:
Country United States
State West Virginia
County Jefferson
Area
- Town 0.
..... Click the link for more information.

arsenal is an establishment for the construction, repair, storage and issue of weapons and ammunition. The word arsenal appears in various forms in Romanic languages (from which it has been adopted into Teutonic), i.e.
..... Click the link for more information.

Shenandoah River is a tributary of the Potomac River, approximately 150 mi (241 km) long, in the U.S. states of Virginia and West Virginia. The principal tributary of the Potomac, the river and its tributaries drain several lateral valleys in the Appalachians on the west side of
..... Click the link for more information.

Inside contracting is the practice of hiring contractors who work inside the proprietor's factory. It replaced the putting out system, where contractors worked in their own facilities. Inside contracting was the system favored by the Springfield and Harper's Ferry Armories.
..... Click the link for more information.

Ordnance Corps is a combat service support branch of the United States Army.

Mission

The mission of the Corps (as stated on their website ) is:

..... Click the link for more information.

A milling machine is a machine tool used for the complex shaping of metal and other solid materials. Its basic form is that of a rotating cutter or endmill which rotates about the spindle axis (similar to a drill), and a movable table to which the workpiece is affixed.
..... Click the link for more information.

18th century - 19th century - 20th century
1790s 1800s 1810s - 1820s - 1830s 1840s 1850s
1823 1824 1825 - 1826 - 1827 1828 1829

:
Subjects: Archaeology - Architecture -
..... Click the link for more information.

Editing of this page by unregistered or newly registered users is currently disabled due to vandalism.
If you are prevented from editing this page, and you wish to make a change, please discuss changes on the talk page, request unprotection, log in, or .
..... Click the link for more information.

The American system of manufacturing involves semi-skilled labor using machine tools and templates (or jigs) to make standardized, identical, interchangeable parts, manufactured to a tolerance.
..... Click the link for more information.

For the American band of the 1970s and 1980s, see .

Springfield Armory was the primary center for the manufacture of U.S. military small arms and the site of many important technological advances (see Springfield rifle) from 1794 to 1968.
..... Click the link for more information.

Simeon North (1763 - 1852) was a Middletown, Connecticut gun manufacturer, who developed America's first milling machine in 1818.
..... Click the link for more information.

State of Connecticut

Flag of Connecticut Seal of Connecticut
Nickname(s): The Constitution State, The Nutmeg State^[]
Motto(s): Qui transtulit sustinet^[0]
..... Click the link for more information.

This article is copied from an article on Wikipedia.org - the free encyclopedia created and edited by online user community. The text was not checked or edited by anyone on our staff. Although the vast majority of the wikipedia encyclopedia articles provide accurate and timely information please do not assume the accuracy of any particular article. This article is distributed under the terms of GNU Free Documentation License.

Herod_Archelaus