Just a year later, at the National Exposition of Railway Appliances held in Chicago, National received awards for the best Bolt Header, best Bolt Cutter and best Hot Press Nut Machine. It was the Bolt Cutter that carried the National name into bolt shops around the world. It's performance in cutting true threads was unparalleled. Our No. 1 Bolt Cutter cut threads from as small as 3/16" to as large as 1". It weighed about 900 pounds and sold for only $233.

Bolts were only half of the fastener, the other half was the nut which was commonly hot sheared and punched from strips of rectangular stock in Hot Pressed Nut Machines. After making the initial blank, nuts had to be deburred and tapped. On the scene came a new National innovation, the automatic rotary tapper which required only that the operator load and unload.

In 1889, the New York Daily published this brief statement about National Machinery Company: "This is a mammoth concern, occupying a building 300 ft. by 100 ft. They are equal to an annual output of $150,000 and enjoy the unique distinction of being the only establishment in the world capable of equipping a bolt and nut factory with machinery. They have correspondence and make sales all over the world".

Innovative machines continued to flow from our drawing boards and by the turn of the century, National Machinery Company was shipping machines like Tripple Bolt Cutters, Box-Bed Headers, Hammer Headers, Hot Forged Nut Machines and even a few cold rivet machines. By then, we had doubled our original 300,000 sq. ft. factory and our customers numbered around 350.

Life was not all business and machinery at National, it was family, community and country. An example was the presidential election in 1888 where all employees took part in the Republican Victory Celebration. There was a barbecue at the National Machinery works and the main course was beef and a whole pig slowly roasted in a large oven in our foundry building. Long tables seated our 100 employees and at the head was Bill Anderson, our president and host. At this occasion, General Gibson was the guest of honor and the after dinner speaker.

Other outside activities led to the coining of the name we still hold dear today "The National Family". Bicycle excursions were very popular and some of them extended as far down as Kentucky. Back as far as 1893, we had a championship baseball team and we began our tradition of family picnics.

When Meshech Frost persuaded Bill Anderson, who owned the National Bolt and Pipe Machinery Co. in Cleveland, Ohio, to relocate in Tiffin, he received some stock as a fee for promoting the transaction and move to Tiffin. As the plant started to prosper, stock holders decided to buy out the company and an offer was made. Meshech was of a different mind however, he felt as long as the other investors had set a price he should have the opportunity to buy them out. It was agreed upon and Mr. Frost obtained an option on the National Machinery Company. The option was given because the other investors who controlled practically all of the capital in the Tiffin area and were certain Meshech could not come up with the money to exercise the option. Meshech, however went to New York and borrowed the money from an old friend, Diamond Jim Brady.

By 1902, the plant had expanded to 68,000 sq. ft. Meshech continued "The National Family" tradition and on Saturday, June 20, 1903 a "National" Day was held at Meadowbrook Park in Bascom, Ohio. Electric trolley cars left Tiffin at 8 o'clock in the morning to take National families to the park and return them at 10:30 that night. The day was filled with races, contests, and athletic events with prizes from pearl necklaces to Meerschaum pipes.

Modernization continued and in 1908, the first large overhead crane was installed. As modern electric motors came on the scene, the steam engines that powered our line shafts became a thing of the past and electricity became the new source of power.

Even in the early days, National's entrepreneurial spirit took us into new fields of endeavor, some successful and some not. We tried our hand at rock and ore crushers and furnaces. Both of which were less than successful and were dropped from our lines around the turn of the century. Our fence-making machine didn't last long either but our new Automatic Tapper met with immediate success and lasted for half a century.

Through the years our mainstay was machinery to form metal parts. Nail-making machines were introduced in 1885 and continued as a steady source of business into the 1940's. Our Nail Maker was popular around the world and at times was the only nail maker available.

The early 20th Century was fast becoming the era of the railroads and we built many machines for railroad blacksmith shops. The need for machines to forge parts other than bolts was gradually increasing. Around 1915, the demand for forgings was reaching an all-time high for the railroad and the new automotive industry. Engineers were finding that forgings were far stronger than the castings. With the popularity of forging, we gave the industry a National Heavy-Pattern Forging Machine, our first machine designed specifically for forging parts not just bolts and nuts. This became the forerunner of what we know today as our High-Duty Forging Machine.

As the years passed, "The National Family" not only worked together but continued to play together with special baseball games and picnics like the 1923 and 1927 affairs at Ruggles Beach at Lake Erie. A prize for the tallest woman was a sack of flour. The winner of the horseshoe pitching contest took home a ton of coal.

The 25 years between 1925 and 1950 were filled with new ideas and innovations. Techniques were developed to produce difficult forgings and technical papers were written on forging operations and forging tool design. In August of 1925, we held our "2nd Exposition and Demonstration of Forging Machinery". In this four day show, over 200 visitors from all over the world witnessed the latest equipment and methods available for forging parts. In all, there were 35 headers and forging machines.

The interest in forging grew and in 1927 we built the worlds largest forging machine, the 7-1/2". It weighed a whopping 187 tons. In 1928,we shipped the first automatic Tong Feed Forging Machine. This radical new concept in forging caught the eye of another very important entrepreneur of the time Henry Ford. Henry purchased a National 4" Automatic Tong Feed Forging Machine. When visitors and dignitaries arrived in Detroit, he drove them directly to his National 4" Forging Machine which he considered the marvel of its day.

Innovations continued. In 1930, a new machine and a new name was flashed across the forging industry Maxipres. Although the Maxipres really started as a coining press, it soon became a valuable asset to a forging line. With the development of our pneumatic clutch in the early 1940's, it was renamed the High-Speed Forging Maxipres.

Throughout the 1930's the plant continued to expand even though the depression had drained the life's blood from American industry. Thousands were out of work and the depression continued to darken, but "The National Family" grew even closer together. Many in the shop worked only four days a month and most of their work went into building stock machines since very few machines were being shipped. A lot of effort went into tending large gardens near the railroad tracks out back. In a barn just across the tracks, hogs were butchered and sold at cost. A cooperative grocery-buying program was set up and operated out of the Masonic Temple building.

Through these dark and bleak days, National engineers continued to work on optimistic programs for our future. They designed new Cold Headers and Boltmakers and built full scale wooden models to test out their theories and new ideas. The first Cold Header was shipped but not sold, it was put out on a trial basis. The foresight in continuing to design for our future paid off as business conditions began to improve our Boltmakers and Cold Headers were ready to meet the industry challenge of increased productivity. These new machines contributed significantly to our rapid recovery from the devastating depression.

Those ten years from 1930 to 1940 were hard but they also proved to be very productive. There were many firsts developed for the metal forming industry, machines like: Maxipresses, Cold Ball Headers, Double-Stroke Headers, Tong-Feed Forging Machines, Boltmakers, Single-Stroke Cold Headers, Open-Die Cold Headers, Long-Stroke Cold Headers and Progressive Headers.

In 1940, 15 years after the 1925 Exposition, we hosted a three day show in Tiffin. In addition to showing and demonstrating our machines, a variety of formed and forged parts were on display showing visitors what the National machines could do. We started out in the 1940's with a big bang. In 1941 we built our first 9" Forging Machine weighing just over 525,000 pounds. This machine was known throughout the world as the largest forging machine ever built. In contrast, we also offered a new line of small machines, Tubular Rivet Headers, the smallest weighed 2,500 pounds.

The family picnic held at Meadowbrook in 1942 was considered a day off from the hectic production line environment we were working in during those war-torn times. The energy of our 400 people turned toward the war effort. We even held our own scrap drive in 1942. In 1943, our efforts won us the renowned "Army Navy E" award. Only about 3.5% of the eligible companies in our nation won this prestigious award.

From June of 1944 until December of 1945, National published its "Serviceman's News Bulletin." The National employees published it monthly for their friends and buddies in the armed services. It kept them up to date with the news at home. Nineteen forty-four was significant for another reason. We introduced our first Cold Nut Former a new way of making nuts. This machine incorporated a unique transfer that allowed us to rotate the blank between operations improving the integrity of the formed nut blank while increasing productivity and saving material. This process is still the preferred method for making nuts even today.

Our growth continued and not just with the new products we developed but with the purchase of E.J. Manville Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. This helped us round out our line of slotters, threaders and other fastener making machinery. We continued to build the Manville line and supply repair parts for another 20 years.

In 1947, an employee open house was held that featured a cafeteria-style supper, hosted by a different department each evening. There was another brief open house in 1948 which gave employees and their families a chance to see the world's largest forging press, our 1,600,000 pound No. 10 Maxipres. This massive press weighed more than half the population of Tiffin.

As the 1940's came to a close, we celebrated our 75th anniversary with an optimistic eye on the future. Our plant was now three times the original size and we were 500 strong. National had developed a world-wide reputation for building the best hot and cold forging machinery.