Short answers, pulled from the story.
Thomas Blanchard invented the copying lathe for producing interchangeable gun stocks, a gun barrel machine for the Springfield Armory, a mechanical tack-maker producing five hundred tacks per minute, a steam-powered carriage patented in 1825, and an upriver steamboat launched in 1831, among more than twenty-five patented devices over his lifetime.
Blanchard lived much of his life in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he worked closely with the Springfield Armory and filed many of his patents. He was born in Sutton, Massachusetts on the 24th of June, 1788.
Blanchard's copying lathe, completed in 1818, traced a three-dimensional model and automatically reproduced its contour in wood, making interchangeable gun stocks at the Springfield Armory. The technology was later adapted by shoe manufacturers in the 1850s to produce lasts in standard sizes, enabling shoes to be made in consistent, repeatable sizes for the first time.
Blanchard patented his steam-powered carriage, which he called a horseless carriage, on the 28th of December, 1825, before railroads had been introduced in the United States.
Thomas Blanchard was awarded more than twenty-five patents during his lifetime. Several of the original documents were later destroyed by fire, so only the titles and dates of some patents survive.
Blanchard's first invention, patented in 1806, was a mechanical tack-making machine that produced five hundred tacks per minute, far surpassing hand manufacture in speed and consistency. He sold the rights to the machine for five thousand dollars.