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Love 'em or hate 'em, there's no denying the contributions Greenlee has made to not only the electrical contracting industry, but the entire world of tools and manufacturing. Greenlee started out it's existence making high-quality, innovative woodworking machines. They are in no small way responsible for the rapid expansion of the railroads across the United States with a number of key innovations in woodworking and manufacturing that were used extensively in the laying of tracks and the manufacture of train cars. Greenlee also made significant contributions to the WWII war-material manufacturing effort with its Automatic Transfer Machines. It all began back in the mid 1800's with a pair of barrel making twin brothers; Ralph Lemuel and Robert Stebbins Greenlee. Edmund Greenlee, their father, had raised the brothers in an environment of creativity and inventiveness; in fact, he held several patents of his own on various pieces of barrel making equipment. Ralph and Robert worked as coopers with their father until 1862 when they decided to move from Summerhill Pennsylvania to the larger market of Chicago Illinois. There, the Greenlee brothers found success, but were interested in expanding into other types of wood working equipment. In 1866 they established Greenlee Brothers & Co. and created a high quality line of equipment that included saws, planers, shapers, drills and more. In 1876 they invented the first successful hollow-chisel mortiser. This tool drills a square hole using a combination of an auger bit, to remove the bulk of the waste material and a four-sided chisel to square-up the corners. The shape of the hollow-chisel bit inspired the Greenlee logo which is still in use today. - the rest is history. [Click here to see Greenlee's history webpage] A more comprehensive source of information about Greenlee's history can be found in a fairly rare book, Round Bits... Square Holes, published in 1962. (Cited on Greenlee's history webpage) |
The brothers started to focus on large, specialty machinery; especially for the railroad industry. They created a factory-in-a-boxcar that could take raw logs and turn them into railroad ties at a rate of one every 10 seconds. Another machine would spike the ties into place. Their gang-saws and gang-drills were of ingenious design and exceptional quality, as was the rest of their product line. In 1881, Greenlee Brothers developed the first self-feed rip saw which became their top seller, quickly - and somewhat surprisingly - out-selling the hollow-chisel mortiser.
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View some images of Greenlee's past:
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A Little Greenlee History