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After their independent existence Pratt and Whitney became part of the Niles-Bement-Pond group of companies. One of the most famous names in machine tools, the Niles part of Niles-Bement-Pond equation came from two brothers, James and Jonathan Niles, who left their native Connecticut in 1845 to establish a company in Cincinnati to repair boats on the Ohio river. Their business grew rapidly and they were soon able to afford the luxury of designing their own power plants - which led them eventually to build steam-powered sugar mills that they sent to the booming plantations in Louisiana by the very same river boats that had created their original wealth. By 1853 the firm was a major employer, providing jobs for between four and five-hundred workers.
The firms foray into machine tool building came about almost by accident for during the Civil War the firm, needing another lathe, found that non was available quickly enough, and so instructed two young mechanics, George A. Gray Jr. and Alexander Gordon to built one. So successful was their design that before long they found themselves in charge of a new department manufacturing nothing but machine tools.
In 1866 the Niles brother were bought out by a partnership of Gaff (a wealthy distiller in Aurora, Ill.), Gray & Gordon . They retained the Niles name as the "Niles Tool Works" since their main interest was in the manufacture of machine tools. The Niles factory in Cincinnati stood on a site needed for the new Pennsylvania Railroad station, and the Company moved Hamilton, Ohio, where water power was available from a canal along the Miami River.
The Niles Tool Works expanded enormously, soon rivalling the Sellers firm in Philadelphia as a builder and exporter of large machine tools. In 1898 Niles purchased control of the Pond Machine Tool Works and during the next year a great consolidation took place with the Niles-Bement-Pond Co. being formed from several major builders of large machine tools including the Niles Tool Works, Bement, Miles & Co., the Pond Machine Tool Company and the Philadelphia Engineering Works. Pratt & Whitney were bought out two years later; the company was being torn apart by internal bickering and was unable to resist a take-over bid.
Among the companies acquired later were John Bertram in Canada, the Ridgeway Machine Company (which built boring mills in Pennsylvania) and the Milwaukee Machine Tool Company, a lathe builder as well as numerous other small companies. As a result of expanding markets, improved exports, a strong home trade and their take-over activities Niles-Bement-Pond became, for a time, the largest machine-tool company in the world.
In 1920, the Company's catalog, issued from their headquarters in New York, was a huge 635 page hard-backed book, with full-page halftones of the company's main products. Some were series production items, but many were highly specialised machines designed for munitions and similar military work. The range of products was so great, from toolmaker's flats and slip gages to armour plate bending presses, from precision bench to vertical lathes with 42-foot diameter tables, that the company could offer to undertake the construction and complete equipping of new industrial plants with NBP machine tools, cranes, railway engines, track and associated services.
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