One of my vices is vises, The Charles Parker Co. 1921

Railway Mechanical Engineer, June 1921

Charles Parker was born in 1809 and became one of Connecticut’s leading industrialists.  He started his manufacturing career inventing and producing coffee mills in a small shop in 1832. By 1860, he owned several large factories and employed hundreds of people, in and around Meriden. Vises were only one of his products, Parker products included hardware and house wares, flatware, clocks, lamps, piano stools and benches, coffee mills, industrial machinery, and, after 1862, guns. His descendants carried on his businesses until 1957. 

I mentioned the Parker vise to a tool-centric friend who took me down to see the one he has had for years. About a hundred years old now, still doing fine.