About The Thomas Passmore Project

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This project reconstructs the business of Thomas Passmore, a Philadelphia tinsmith whose shop developed into a centralized and coordinated manufactory in the 1790s. The project argues that this form of production operated without reliance on machinery or a fixed, Smithian-style division of labor, and represents a distinct path in early American industrial development.

Passmore’s business records—account books, financial volumes, and related documents—preserve in unusual detail the daily operations of a late eighteenth-century manufacturing enterprise. These materials have not previously been the subject of full, archive-based analysis. This project constitutes the first sustained reconstruction of Passmore’s manufactory, its production practices, its labor structure, and its commercial reach.

The evidence shows a workshop organized around coordinated production rather than task-based division of labor. Journeymen produced batches of finished goods, often repeating the same forms over time, while the shop as a whole maintained a high level of output and consistency. This was not a system of interchangeable parts or segmented tasks, but a different form of organized manufacture—centralized, flexible, and pre-mechanized.

This challenges conventional accounts of early industrial development, which often move directly from small-scale craft production to the mechanized factory. Passmore’s manufactory suggests an alternative trajectory: one in which coordination, scale, and repeated production could be achieved without the structures typically associated with later industrialization.

Transcription and research work is ongoing, and additional material and analysis will be added as the reconstruction continues. The broader aim is to establish a detailed account of Passmore’s tinware production, pricing, labor practices, and participation in Atlantic trade, based on the systematic transcription and analysis of the surviving archive.

The work of the Thomas Passmore Project is conducted by Karl J. Schmidt, a historian and professional tinsmith specializing in early American tinware. He holds a PhD in history and has more than thirty years of experience in teaching and research. His work combines extensive archival reconstruction with practical knowledge of historical metalworking, allowing for a detailed analysis of production methods that are often difficult to recover from documentary sources alone.