Ball and Roller Bearing Company

The Ball and Roller Bearing Company is significant for its association with inventor Lewis Heim. In the factory, Heim developed the modern centerless grinding machine, an important advance in machine tool technology.

The company's buildings originated with a house and two-story machine shop built in 1886 by Joseph Nutt, an English-born machinist. Nutt operated the shop and resided with his family in the house until his death in 1896. His machine shop operation served Danbury hat manufacturers.

Danbury had risen to prominence as a major national center of men's hat manufacturing during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. By the 1880s two dozen independent hat companies employing some 4,000 hatters were located in the city. Hundreds more were employed by what today would be termed "satellite industries," businesses that supplied various needs of the hat companies. Among these latter were machine shops, the first of which, the Danbury Foundry, was established in 1864. By 1889 six were in operation. Several, like Nutt's, were founded by English-born machinists. Nutt's shop is the last of these six shops extant in 1889 to survive in any form.

In 1904 the property was acquired by Lewis and Alfred Heim for their Heim Machine Company. Lewis Heim was an inventor who is considered by historians of machine tool technology to have been a pivotal figure because of his invention of the prototype of the modern centerless grinding machine.

Heim was born on a farm in East Fishkill, New York, in 1874. He moved to Danbury as a youth, working in hat shops where he developed and patented several designs for hatmaking machines, which he sold to a multinational hat machine company with a branch in Danbury, Turner Machine Co. Heim later developed and patented commercial laundry machines, and founded the Heim Machine Company to manufacture them. The machines were marketed internationally in Canada, Europe, Asia, and Australia, as well as in the United States. Heim, in partnership with his brother Alfred, turned next to the manufacture of automotive bearings. Connecticut had become the leading center of bearing manufacturing by 1910 with the success of companies like Fafnir in New Britain, New Departure in Stamford, and the Torrington Company. In 1909 Lewis and Alfred Heim founded the Ball and Roller Bearing Company. By 1917 they had expanded the former Nutt Machine Shop three times to accommodate their growing production.

In 1917 Lewis Heim patent the Heim Centerless Cylindrical Grinder, a significant contribution to the technology of mass production. During the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, advances in grinding technology facilitated the development of precision machine tools to accommodate the demands of the railroads and later of the automobile industry. Such machines as the Universal Grinding Machine, developed by Brown and Sharpe in the 1870s, and the heavy-duty production precision grinder, invented by Connecticut's Charles P. Norton in 1905, "enabled the fledgling automotive industry to build engines accurately and efficiently," helped make possible the rapid advance in manufacturing which characterized the period.

By the early twentieth century, three methods of grinding were in use internal, external, and end grinding. All of t which resembled lathes in construction and appearance and held workpieces in the same way as a lathe. Centerless grinding was known in principle but was little used outside the needle manufacturing industry. Heim's Centerless Cylindrical Grinder was an enclosed machine with two grindstones that rotated near each other, on parallel shafts but at different speeds. A blade-like rest set slightly above the midpoint of the two stones held the workpiece, which was constantly cooled by a stream of water while it was being ground. This new design allowed cylindrical workpieces to be ground accurately and inexpensively to tolerances as precise as one-thousandth of an inch. Heim continued to improve upon the design throughout his career, receiving a total of 28 patents for improvements to the grinder during his lifetime.

Heim's Centerless Cylindrical Grinder became the basis for all modern centerless grinding machines. The machine had an immediate and widespread application in the automobile industry for grinding small cylindrical engine parts such as pistons and valve tappets, as well as roller bearing casings. The Ball and Roller Bearing Company produced 257 of the machines before 1922 in the 20-22 Maple Avenue factory. Buyers included automobile companies like Olds, Reo, and International Harvester, and other bearing manufacturers like New Departure and the Torrington Co. When other manufacturers began to offer similar centerless grinders on the market, Heim sued for patent infringement and won a large settlement. Hoping to expand, the company purchased several new factory sites, finally constructing a new facility across the street from 20-22 Maple Avenue, but at the end of 1922, just as the new factory was being completed, Heim sold the patent rights to the Heim Centerless Cylindrical Grinder to the Cincinnati Milling Machine Company. 20-22 Maple Avenue is the only factory where the centerless grinder is known to have been produced by Heim. The company sold the new factory in 1928.

Heim left Ball and Roller Bearing Company in the mid-1920s to invest in Florida real estate, in the Mount Dora area. After he suffered reverses during the 1930s, he attempted to re-establish himself in the company but the new owners, all former employees, reportedly rebuffed him. Heim then founded a new company, based in Fairfield, Connecticut, and now known as Heim-Incon. He continued his career as an inventor until his death in 1964.° Among his inventions are machine tool parts still known in the industry as Heim joints and Heim rod ends. During World War II Heim is said to have contributed to the Allied victory by designing bearings for Allied fighters based on the design of captured Messerschmitt parts, which allowed Allied planes to outmaneuver the German fighters.

The Ball and Roller Bearing Company continued to manufacture bearings, reaching a production peak during World War II when it had contracts for tank bearings for the U.S. Army and employed 125 people. The company helped pave the way for industrial diversification in Danbury in several ways. The efforts of local businessmen to assist Heim in his quest for the property for a new plant in 1917 led to the founding later that year of the Danbury Industrial Corporation, one of the nation's earliest economic development corporations. The company also laid the foundation locally for bearing manufacturing. With the move to Danbury of the Barden Corporation during World War II, bearing manufacturing became Danbury's largest single employer, helping to fill the void created by the decline of hat manufacturing after the war. The Ball and Roller Bearing Company remained at 20-22 Maple Avenue until 1974 when nearing bankruptcy, it moved to New Milford, where it continues in business on a modest scale. The factory was sold to the present owner, who made craft products for department store chains.