Century-old photos of Fives' locomotive plant in Givors, France

John Garner · Aug 29, 2017

In case you've wondered what Fives did before they bought Giddings & Lewis, Cincinnati Milacron, and several other machine-tool manufacturers, here's a partial answer: Retour au Sommaire :/Les Ateliers Fives-Lille - 1911

tonylathes · Aug 29, 2017

John Garner said:
In case you've wondered what Fives did before they bought Giddings & Lewis, Cincinnati Milacron, and several other machine-tool manufacturers, here's a partial answer: Retour au Sommaire :/Les Ateliers Fives-Lille - 1911

Judging by some of the enlargements, possibly taken on 10 x 8 glass plates. A wonderful collection - thank you for sharing.

John Garner · Sep 1, 2017

The Fives photos of the machinist standing on a planer table intrigued me -- the planer appears to have both a milling-or-drilling spindle and a standard planer toolhead on its crossrail -- and the maker, Ducommun, was not familiar to me. Digging a bit, I found another treasure trove . . . page-by-page photos of a very early 1900s Ducommun catalog.

Flickr: Page Not Found

I tip my hat to the photographer, Daniel Henri, for taking the photos and making them available on the internet. Merci beaucoup Monsieur!

Posting edited to add that the link works when I try it, despite showing itself here as "Page Not Found"

ewlsey · Sep 1, 2017

It looks like they are making everything there except locomotives. Munitions, electric motors and generators, pumps, huge riveted beams, etc.

Some of the buildings look to be quite old, even at the time of the photos. One appears to have a frame of wooden beams with a steel rail for the crane.

Marty Feldman · Sep 2, 2017

An extraordinary collection. Something of interest in almost every picture in the series.

In the one of the forging gang, #74, it is easy to pick out, in the center of the photograph, the boss (the only hatless one) and his son, both in bowties and both with probably the softest hands in the bunch. In composing the picture for the photograph, the anvil has, for some reason, been set on the round of the treetrunk rather than on the flat crosscut.

-Marty-

Search

Largest Manufacturing Technology Community on the Web

Search

Century-old photos of Fives' locomotive plant in Givors, France

John Garner

Titanium

tonylathes

Aluminum

John Garner

Titanium

ewlsey

Diamond

Marty Feldman

Titanium

Similar threads