Originally featured in Points West in Summer 2008
Firearms Factory, Exhibit in the Cody Firearms Museum
Upon independence, the United States was an agrarian society with individual craftsmen supplying the needs of the farming populace. Within half a century, however, factories were taking over the bulk of the manufacturing of goods from textiles to guns.
During the late nineteenth century, the firearms industry was responsible for many of the design innovations that made modern manufacturing methods possible. Interchangeable parts, in particular, meant a firearms owner could replace a cylinder or a stock without having to purchase a brand new gun. Certainly, many of the machines still in use today have their origin in the firearms factories of that period.
Firearms factory replica in the Cody Firearms Museum. Gift of Savage Arms Company. 1991.19.1–3
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