Bullard Machine Tool Company

A Bullard CNC VTL.

Bullard Mult-Au-Matic, a vertical, multispindle automatic lathe, 1914.^[1]

Memorial Day 1942 at Bullard

The Bullard Machine Tool Company was a large American machine tool builder. It specialized in vertical boring mills and was largely responsible for the development of the modern form of that class of machine tools.^[2]

The firm was founded in 1894 by Edward Payson Bullard Sr (born 1841-04-18 in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, USA; died 1906-12-22 in Bridgeport, Connecticut, USA^[3]). He received formative experience at the Colt armory and Pratt & Whitney,^[3] which were influential development centers for generations of toolmakers.^[4] Bullard Sr is believed to have developed the first small boring machine designed to do the accurate work previously performed on the faceplate of a lathe.^[5] Roe (1916) says that "Up to that time boring machines were relied on only for large and rough work."^[5]

Bullard Sr's son, Edward Payson Bullard Jr (1872–1953), continued the family machine tool business and brought the turret principle to the vertical boring mill, making it a vertical turret lathe.^[6] For a while in America during the 20th century, the name "Bullard" on the shop floor was something of a genericized trademark for vertical turret-head boring mills.^[7] E.P. Bullard Jr led the development of the company's multiple-spindle Mult-Au-Matic brand machine that became an important automatic lathe in the mass production of parts for the automotive industry.^[1][6] Bullard Jr was president of the company for 40 years, through World War I, the interwar period, and World War II, a period during which the Bullard company was the largest machine tool builder in the U.S.,^[6] and vast volumes of military matériel were produced by countless companies running Bullard machines. Bullard is now owned by Bourn& Koch, based in Rockford, Illinois. Bourn & Koch continues to provide OEM parts, service and support for their machines.

References

1. Roe 1916, p. 276 ff.
2. Roe 1916, pp. 183-185
3. Day 1996, pp. 113-114
4. Roe 1916, p. 174
5. Roe 1916, p. 184
6. American Precision Museum 1982
7. Burghardt 1959, p. 12.

Bibliography

• Burghardt, Henry D.; Axelrod, Aaron; Anderson, James (1959), Machine Tool Operation, 1 (5th ed.), New York: McGraw-Hill, OCLC 964718.
• American Precision Museum (1982), "Edward P. Bullard (1872-1953)", Machine Tool Hall of Fame, American Precision Museum, retrieved 2016-11-11
• Day, Lance; McNeil, Ian, eds. (1996), Biographical Dictionary of the History of Technology, New York: Routledge, ISBN 0-415-06042-7, LCCN 95026250
• Roe, Joseph Wickham (1916), English and American Tool Builders, New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, LCCN 16011753. Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (LCCN 27-24075); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois, (ISBN 978-0-917914-73-7).