Now We Make Tools
For Our Own Industry
Since the war, a new business lias
developed to serve new type of in¬
dustries coining to iN'ortli Carolina.
By IIAItOIJ) IILTTO
North Carolina has come "of age"
industrially.
A new type industry, formerly
found only in Pittsburgh. Buffalo. De¬
troit and other heavily industrialized
northern areas, has made its appear¬
ance in the Tar Heel stale. What's
more, it's undoubtedly here to stay.
The reference is to machine tool
manufacture, long an adjunct of the
automotive, aircraft and other "heavy"
industries.
Greensboro, known significantly as
the "Gate City" of the Piedmont, is
the home of a thriving firm which
manufactures machine tools for the
metal working trades. The company
— Wysong and Miles — is the only
one of its kind in the state. Further¬
more it is the only member of the
National Machine Tool Builders Asso¬
ciation south of Kentucky and cast of
the Mississippi River. And that's not
just because other firms have neg¬
lected to pay dues in the Association.
The Greensboro concern is the only
one in this part of the country quali¬
fied for such membership.
The significant fact is not so much
the emergence of a new type of manu¬
facturing firm in the state. It is. rather,
the obvious, rapid change being
wrought in the economic countenance
of North Carolina by the influx of
heavy industries of all types. The post¬
war years have witnessed the spring¬
ing up in this section of the southeast
of electronics, plastics and aircraft in¬
dustries. air conditioning and heating
equipment industries, textile manufac¬
turing firms utilizing man-made fibers,
atomic energy plants and other basic
industries. That machine tools them¬
selves arc now being manufactured in
North Carolina points up the indus¬
trial maturity being achieved by the
slate, which has. in the last few years,
been rapidly shedding its agricultural
cloak in favor of the mantle of indus¬
try.
Wysong and Miles, far from spring¬
ing into being over night, actually dates
back to 1903. During these years,
however, their principal product has
been woodworking machinery for the
furniture industry heavily concen¬
trated in central North Carolina.
The firm really got into the metal¬
working machine tool business by the
back door.
One day in 1943. at war’s height,
the Greensboro company — with forty
years of successful experience in wood¬
working machinery behind it — sud¬
denly received a rush defense contract
for metal working machinery.
The order, as defense orders went
in those days, was not particularly
large. It called for 200 power squar¬
ing shears, value just under $200,000,
and 300 hand operated slip roll form¬
ing machines, value about $45.000.
For the uninitiated, power squaring
shears are used for accurate, straight-
line cutting of large metal sheets into
strips, squares, rectangles and other
straight-edge shapes. These prepared
shapes arc used as parts for a wide
variety of items such as automobiles,
farm machinery, trucks, airplanes,
file cabinets, furnaces, refrigerators
and many other items of daily use.
Similarly, slip roll forming machines
Agents and dealers from all over the U. S. and from foreign countries come io Wysong and Miles' Greensboro shops
to inspect nov models. I.ast fall the firm held open house for dealers throughout the nation to show a new series of power
squaring shears. This group inspecting a shear includes, left to right, R, I.. Beall. W. R. Kime. Roy Clarkson, T. II.
Johansen (partially hidden behind Clarkson). R. F. Hall, Jr., Barto Brown, R. L. Butchard, and Andy Thompson. Messrs.
Hall, Kime, Beall and Butchard are Wysong and Miles' officials. Johansen and Thompson are with Central-West Ma¬
chinery Co. of Chicago, while Clarkson and Brown are with Arnold-Brown Machinery and Supplv Co. of Birmingham,
Ala.
THE STATE. January >7. 19S3