PROGRESS OF THE SMALL ARMS MAFUFACTURE. 441 
to the invention of a lathe for cutting irregular forms, which is due 
to an American of the name of Blanshard, a machine which the com- 
mission found had been used very extensively for about thirty years 
in the turning of shoe lasts, boot trees, oars, spokes of wheels, gun 
stocks, &c. 
This machine was first used in the Springfield armoury, about 
twenty-five years ago. It seems to give only the external form 
to the stock. It was a work of time before other kinds of machines 
were perfected which were required for the subsequent processes of 
letting in the lock, guard, &c, but this was eventually accomplished. 
I make no attempt to describe the great variety of processes em- 
ployed to produce the sixty-two or sixty-three several parts which con- 
stitute the gun. It will be sufficient to say that the total number of 
processes under which an Enfield musket of the pattern 1853 undergoes 
is upwards of 600. Guns made by this system will interchange ; that 
is, any part of one gun will fit another. 
The factory of the Birmingham Small Arms Company, to which I 
have alluded, is now in working operation. The system is there carried 
out in its full integrity. It has been planned on a scale to produce a 
thousand guns per week. There are upwards of 300 machines at work, 
but at present it has not reached its full power. The number of guns 
now made there is about 500 per week. 
The proving of barrels, with a view to the security of the public 
is a subject which has received the careful attention of the legislature. 
In 1637, a charter was granted by Charles I. to the gun makers of 
London, for proving all manner of guns made within ten miles of 
London. 
In Birmingham, the proof of barrels was left to each individual 
manufacturer, till in 1813 a public proof house was erected in Banbury 
street, and an Act passed rendering compulsory the proving of all barrels, 
made in England, either at the proof house of London or Birmingham. 
A second Act, giving more extended powers, was passed in 1815. 
These regulations worked well for Birmingham, and the security 
which was felt in English guns materially aided in obtaining for our 
trade the high reputation which it enjoys. No change was made in the 
system pursued till 1855, when the inventions of modern times called 
for fresh regulations. They were embodied in an Act of Parliament 
passed in that year, which remains still in force. The security of the 
user was very greatly increased by the provisions of this Act. Under 
the previous one, barrels were proved only once, and that in a rather 
early stage of manufacture. It followed that certain descriptions of 
guns, as, for instance, rifles were grooved, and double guns when jointed 
together, were weakened after proof, and sometimes rendered unsafe. 
The present Act requires that all such barrels shall be proved twice, 
once " provisionally" as the Act terms it, and a second time "definitively," 
