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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] William Nicholson Biography NICHOLSON,
William Thomas, inventor, manufacturer, was born March 22, 1834, in
Pawtucket, R. I. He was famous as the inventor of the first successful machine
for cutting files and as the founder and president for thirty years of
the Nicholson File company, one of the great manufacturing corporations
of the east. He attended the common schools until the age of thirteen, and then,
after a year spent at Uxbridge academy, entered a machine shop to learn the
trade of a machinist. He branched out for himself in the manufacture of
machinery and machine tools, in Providence, R. I., and during the civil war
executed heavy, government contracts for supplying parts of rifles. In 1864 he
went to work in earnest upon an idea which had long occupied his mind, the
invention of an improved machine for cutting files. After considerable study and
labor he succeeded in perfecting an invention, and after securing his patents,
immediately organized a stock company for the utilization of it. After years of
experiment, and the inspection of the various methods by which files were
produced both in this country and abroad, and the construction of a variety of
machinery, for which over forty patents were obtained, he brought his company to
the position which he desired, that of being the largest manufacturers of files
in the world, and of producing a recognizedly superior quality article. He died
Oct. 17, 1893, in Providence, R. 1. Thomas William Herringshaw, Herringshaw's Encyclopedia of American Biography of the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: American Publishers' Association, 1901) 693. |