History Gleason Corporation

headquarters in rochester, new york

the gleason works, machine shop evolved gleason corporation, founded irish immigrant william gleason in 1865 after previous experience in other machine shops.

an important product came in 1874 william s invention of first bevel gear planer, planer integral indexing head designed specialize in planing bevel gears. planers , indexing heads had been combined before, never in winning form factor william created gears.

willam s daughter kate integral company s operations, along brothers james e. , andrew c. leader in demonstrating cultural bias against women (or condescending patronizing of women) not founded in reality, , women hold demanding positions in mechanical engineering , sales engineering.

after engineers @ packard developed spiral bevel gears, gleason pioneered machine tools mass-produce them (with automotive differentials being primary market). packard , gleason settled infringement lawsuit regarding packard s patents (u.s. patent 725,328 , u.s. patent 1,209,682) , gleason s patent (u.s. patent 1,325,784).

in 1927, gleason works again led innovation in market, first machine tool builder create machine tools cut hypoid gears (which advanced variant of spiral bevel gears).