This war stimulated the indus tries of Connecticut, which had, at the time, reached a high stage of development. The de mand which the large and suddenly equipped army and navy of the country made upon these industries could_ not fail to have this effect. During the years which have followed the War, the development of manufactures has continued to keep up a healthy growth. This little commonwealth, originally composed of in telligent farming communities, has, by a per fectly natural process of evolution, developed into a manufacturing State which, small though it is in area, holds the rank of eleventh in the gross value of its manufactured products, and the rank of second in the per capita value of these products among the 52 States and Ter ritories enumerated in the latest census. Still more significant is the fact that a larger num ber of patents in proportion to the population have been issued to Connecticut inventors than to those of any other State in the Union during the past 10 years.
It appears to be a fact that in early colonial times the same inventive genius which has de veloped in this little commonwealth was born of necessity, and that it was transmitted by heredity down to the present day. The first settlers brought with them intelligence, broadened views of ecclesiastical control and little or nothing more. There were no industrial specialists among them; and a century after the towns of the colony had taken root in various parts of the soil the leading townsmen, besides being still farmers with a growing tendency to trade, were each of them equal to any industrial or political emergency which might arise. Diaries covering the first half of the 18th cen tury show, for example, that the diarist was a ship-carpenter, house-carpenter, millwright, surveyor, judge of probate, soldier and deputy to the general assembly, while pursuing the regular occupation of a trading farmer; and that his neighbors were equally versatile in their industrial and political pursuits. This di versity of individual talents naturally grew, in time to specializing, as the resources and needs of the commonwealth developed. In 1705 the Granby copper mines were discovered, and un profitably leaving as souvenirs the Granby copper coins, and the old mine itself, which was used as a prison during the Revolu tion, and abandoned at the time of establishing the State prison at Wethersfield in 1827. Other attempts at mining for precious metals were equally unsuccessful, but the working of the Salisbury iron mines, which have been in operation since 1730, proved to be a lasting suc cess. From these mines cannon balls, camp
kettles and other useful articles were furnished during the Revolution, including the chains which were used to bar the progress of the British fleet on the Hudson. The anchor of the famous ship Constitution was forged from Salisbury iron in later days. The ore is a rich hematite, which, prepared by the use of char coal, yields pig-iron which rivals the famous product of the Swedish and Norwegian mines.
Manufactures.— As early as 1749 we find that John Allyn had experimented in brass making; and in 1768 the first paper-mill of Con necticut, if not the first in the country, was successfully established by Christopher Leffing well of Norwich. Tinware was first made 121 Berlin in 1770, and furnished for a century or more an important industry in which the Yankee peddler exercised his wit and shrewd ness. In 1773 Thomas Harland from London established at Norwich a shop for making and repairing watches and clocics. In this shop Eli Terry learned the mechanism of the time pieces of the day, and afterward applied his inventive genius to the manufacture of pillar scroll and case clocks, which he perfected in 1793. Other Connecticut inventors, especially Seth Thomas and Chauncey Jerome, have brought clock-making to, or very near, its pres ent advanced stage. Eli Whitney, the inventor of the cotton-gin, though not a Connecticut man by birth, owed his fortune to the successful manufacture of firearms at New Haven in 1798, after having been robbed of his great invention in the South in 1792.
The first manufacture of sewing-machines on an extended scale was established by Elias Howe, at Bridgeport, followed in the same city by the improvements of Wheeler and Wilson. In 1844 Charles Goodyear of New Haven ob tained his first patent for the process of vul canizing india-rubber, a process entirely of his own discovery, which revolutionized this im portant industry in his day, or rather made a new and still enormously increasing industry in the nse of material which, without this in vention, would have continued to occupy an unimportant place in the industries of the world. The invention of electro-silver plating is traced to the Rogers Brothers of Hartford. In 1846 these three brothers, Asa H., William and Simeon S., succeeded, after much experiment ing, in finding a successful way of applying this process to articles made of various metals. From small beginnings, the business grew to large proportions, resulting in great establish ments in Hartford, Meriden, Waterbury, Nor wich and elsewhere.