Alexander T. Brown and Charles E. Lipe worked together to create several inventions, including the Hy-Lo Bi-Gear for bicycles in 1894, and started the Brown-Lipe Gear Company in 1895.
Since this would require more money and space than they currently possessed, Brown and Lipe teamed up with Winfield Chapin to form Brown-Lipe-Chapin (BLC).
The new company built a five-story building and employed almost 5,000 workers manufacturing differentials, transmissions, and clutch assemblies.
An upturn for the division came on 14 September 1940, when they were awarded a government contract to produce .30 caliber M1919 Browning machine gun barrels.
By September 1941 the division had expanded, taking up an entire floor to manufacture machine guns, with a test firing range set up on the roof of the building.