William Thomas Nicholson was born on March 22, 1834 in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, United States. He was the son of William and Eliza (Forrestell) Nicholson. Shortly after his birth his father, a machinist, moved with his family to Whitinsville, Massachussets.
The boy attended the common-schools in Whitinsville, afterwards spending a year at the academy at Uxbridge, Massachussets. At the age of fourteen he began his machinist apprenticeship in Whitinsville.
After two or three years in various machine shops in Providence, Rhode Island, William entered in 1852 the shop of Joseph R. Brown, where he remained six years--the last two as manager--meanwhile studying mechanics and mechanical drawing.
In the spring of 1858 he established a general machine business of his own in partnership with Isaac Brownell. A year later he bought Brownell's interest and then enlarged his shop so as to manufacture a spirit level and an egg-beater, both of which he patented in 1860. His plans were thwarted by the outbreak of the Civil War, but in due time the demand for war materials gave him the opportunity to manufacture special machinery for the production of small arms. For this work he took Henry A. Monroe into partnership, but in 1864 sold his interest in the ordnance work to his partner and turned his attention to the development of a machine for cutting files, an invention which he had long desired to perfect.
Two patents were granted to him for a file-cutting machine on April 5, 1864, and shortly thereafter he organized the Nicholson File Company in Providence and began to devise the necessary machinery not only for cutting but also for forging and grinding files.
Years were required to accomplish the purpose he had in mind, and meantime he completed forty inventions and produced four hundred different kinds of files.
One of the most serious problems confronting him was the task of establishing a market for his product. Trade unions combined to prevent the use of, and consumers were disposed not to buy, files made by machinery, one of the many objections being that the machine-made file required more labor in use than the hand-made file. Nicholson, however, overcame all difficulties and lived to see his business grow to be the greatest of its kind in the world.
Nicholson married Elizabeth Dexter Gardiner at Smithfield, Rhode Island, in 1857. They had five children.
