It was formed in 1866 around the new idea of using a "cold swaging" technique to create better sewing machine needles, as Torrington expanded, it began to produce other goods.

[1] This was useful because while early sewing machines had been invented by the mid-1800s, the needles at the time were ineffective and imprecise, hammered out similarly to how blacksmiths formed horseshoes.

[3] The Excelsior Needle Company was based on a machine invented In 1864 by two men in Connecticut named Orrin Hopson and Herman Brooks, which could compress sections of steel in a way that they eventually found out was useful for producing better blanks (shaped pieces of metal) for sewing needles.

[3] In 1866, Hopson and Brooks sold the patent to the machine to seven businessmen in Wolcottville, Connecticut (a neighborhood in Torrington), for $5,000 and 100 out of the 800 shares in the newly created Excelsior Needle Company.

[3] In the 1930s, a research engineer named Edmund K. Brown invented a new kind of needle bearing, which eventually became the majority of the company's business.