However by the late 1700s, the region was also known for cabinet and furniture making, originating the Queen Anne and Chippendale styles, produced by an influx of skilled immigrant artisans from England and Scotland who setup workshops throughout the colony.
[3] Plentiful natural resources, including water for power, wood for fires and building material, and iron ore, combined with excellent natural harbors, and navigable rivers leading all the way to Massachusetts, quickly led to the area becoming a center for colonial trade and overseas exports.
As in most of New England, the residents believed that industry, in all senses of the word, not only strengthened individual moral fiber, but also served to make the colony independent and free to pursue its own religious and philosophical beliefs.
While manual labor was valued, learning and study was also prized and many schools were founded, with Yale University the most significant.
In the late 18th century, the Connecticut government engaged in financial incentives for building and operating textile mills.
The Connecticut Valley (Wethersfield, East Windsor, and Colchester) was a center of cabinetmaking and furniture construction in the latter half of the 18th century.
Middletown, Connecticut was the major supplier of pistols to the United States government during the War of 1812, with numerous gun manufacturers in the area.
Also in 1810, Colonel Simeon North built a pistol factory in Middletown on the West River, now the Coginchaug River, also winning a contract from the United States Secretary of War, which led to enlarging his factory to 8,500 square feet (790 m2); he built about 10,000 pistols a year, up until just before the Civil War, designing America's first milling machine.
Another Colt engineer, William Mason, patented 125 inventions for manufacture of firearms, as well as steam pumps and power looms.
Charles E. Billings perfected the drop hammer for metal forging in the 1870s and designed the copper commutator central to the operation of electrical generators and motors.
Albert Pope of Hartford saw a bicycle in Philadelphia in 1876 and was immediately enthralled with the concept of an "ever-saddled horse that eats nothing and requires no care."