ELIPHALET REMINGTON Biography - Bussiness people and enterpreneurs

 
 

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ELIPHALET REMINGTON

Name: Eliphalet Remington                                                           
Born: 28 October 1793                                                               
Died: 12 August 1861                                                               
                                                                                   
Eliphalet Remington (October 28, 1793 - August 12, 1861) designed the Remington     
rifle.                                                                             
                                                                                   
He was born in 1793 in the town of Suffield, Connecticut, to parents whose         
origins lay in Yorkshire, England. He was a blacksmith, and at 23, he hand-made     
a revolutionary sporting rifle using a firing mechanism bought from a dealer,       
producing the barrel himself.                                                       
                                                                                   
The gun received such an enthusiastic response that Remington decided to           
manufacture it in quantity, and formed the firm of E. Remington and Sons, which     
he headed until his death in 1861 . By the mid-1800s the gun had become             
immensely popular with American sportsmen and was one of the standard guns used     
in what has been called "the winning of the West".                                 
                                                                                   
The company continued to grow and to develop its product and gradually began the   
manufacture of other sporting goods, such as bicycles. At the present time, the     
company is known as the Remington Arms Co., Inc.                                   
                                                                                   
What began as a one-man enterprise has become one of the world's leading           
manufacturers of sporting arms. Before the Remington Company was formed,           
American sportsmen relied upon foreign sources for the majority of the sporting     
guns they used. The production of a rifle within the reach of men who wanted and   
needed a good gun changed the picture permanently.                                 
                                                                                   
Eliphalet and Elizabeth Remington's second child was a son, Eliphalet II, named     
for his father. As the couple's only son of their four children who survived       
childhood, Eliphalet II followed in his father's footsteps and entered the         
blacksmith trade at the family's rural forge in Herkimer County, New York.         
                                                                                   
Situated in the Mohawk River Valley the eastern gateway to the expanding           
Northwest Territory and in the path of the still-to-be-constructed Erie Canal       
the fieldstone Remington forge was astride a trade route that would bring           
prosperity to the family and the other inhabitants of the region. The expansion     
of population and wealth along that conduit of commerce would cause Eliphalet       
Remington to enter the arms making business.