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"GTD Makes John Grant's Invention Known Around World" article from Greenfield Recorder-Gazette newspaper

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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This 1953 newspaper article from the Greenfield Recorder-Gazette in Greenfield, Massachusetts, underscores the role John Grant and the Greenfield Tap & Die Corporation played in helping to make Greenfield a vital part of the machine age. His invention, a revolutionary tap & die, established Greenfield as the world's largest center of the manufacture of precision threading tools. With the financial backing of Solon Wiley and Charles Russell, the three men established the firm of Wiley and Russell in 1872, and in 1874, Wiley and Russell purchased Grant's interest in his patent, and the Wiley and Russell Manufacturing Company was created. Soon after, many skilled machinists, with the ability of modern engineers and tool designers, left the company to form their own companies. Some of these independent firms were among those later merged to form the Greenfield Tap & Die Corporation (GTD) in 1912. In 1873, Grant organized the present tap & die branch of the Pratt and Whitney Manufacturing Company in Hartford, Connecticut. World War II (WWII) gave GTD an opportunity to prove its capacity in producing tools needed in the war effort; it was the peak of economic times for the company.

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