
This began many years of intense competition between Plymouth and Markham, who responded by introducing their metal "Chicago" (1888) and "King" (1890) model BB guns. The board of the Windmill Company then decided to offer the gun as a bundled premium item to every farmer who purchased a windmill. General manager Lewis Hough test fired the gun and exclaimed, "Boy, it's a daisy!", and the new gun was named the "Daisy BB Gun". On March 6, 1888, Hamilton approached the windmill company board with an all-metal airgun design of his own and sought to use the factory blast furnaces to mold and stamp the metal parts necessary to build his gun. Sage) in 1886 - manufactured by the Markham Air Rifle Company just across the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway.


Markham (though some argued that the real inventor was George W. In January 1888 the company board met to consider closing the factory, but the motion to liquidate failed by one vote - that of general manager Lewis Cass Hough.Īround the corner from the windmill company, Hamilton also operated the Plymouth Air Rifle Company, to compete with the Markham "Challenger" - a new type of wooden spring-powered airgun shooting BB-size round shot invented by Captain William F. By the mid-1880s the business was struggling, as transporting the heavy steel windmills by wagons throughout the southern part of Michigan, northern Indiana, and throughout Ohio was impractical.

The company started in 1882 by watchmaker and inventor Clarence Hamilton in Plymouth, Michigan, as the Plymouth Iron Windmill Company, to manufacture a type of vaneless windmills that Hamilton invented in 1880.
