no intermediate template or other type of mechanical guide for shaping the gear. Fellows Gear Shaper Company Tools for the mass-production of gears Fellows obtained backing from several Springfield industrialists, including Hartness and William D. Woolson, who founded the Fellows Gear Shaper Company on July 13, 1896. Fellows became manager of the company and Woolson the president. The company built a manufacturing facility in Springfield and ordered a prototype machine from Fitchburg Machine Works. The first "6-Type" production machine was built in 1897 and sold to a Worcester, Massachusetts machine-tool firm. Sales were then slow until the advent of the mass-produced automobile. By 1911 the Fellows Gear Shaper Company was thriving with 37 percent of its production going to Europe. Fellows became president and general manager of the company in 1917. At this time the company had developed: A gear-generating machine, employing a reciprocating gear-like tool A self-locking index-wheel system with worm-drive to control the cutter and work in the gear-generating machine. A methodology for grinding involute curves in gears. A ground master gear. A gear-shaped planing tool for manufacturing helical gears. By 1924 the Fellows Gear Shaper Company, under the direction of Fellows, employed seven hundred men and was capable of producing one hundred gear shapers and four thousand cutters per month. Roe characterized the company's gear shapers as "one of the most important tools in the manufacture of automobiles." Tools for war-time production of gears During World War II the Fellows Gear Shaper Company plant was enlarged to a peak work force of 3,300, including 400 women. The company's gear shaping machinery spanned extremes in capability between being able to produce gears with a 100-inch diameter to 1/16-inch diameter. By the conclusion of the war, Fellows Gear Shaper Company machines were in defense contractor plants manufacturing geared components, including: Airplane propeller shaft webs. (Special Disking Machines). Splines on aircraft engine crankshafts (Horizontal Z-Model). Helical gears for tank transmissions (No. 15B Gear Burnishing Machine). propeller gears for aircraft engines (No. 24 Hydro-Gear Lapper). Fine-pitch gears for aircraft instruments, aerial cameras, bomb fuses, etc. (Straight-Line Gear Generator). Fellows resigned as general manager in 1939, but remained president and director of the company until his death in 1945. Fellows gear shapers continued to be manufactured and supported by Bourn & Koch, Inc. of Rockford, Illinois, as of 2022. Patents and awards Fellows received 39 patents pertaining to gear shaping, generating, grinding