bishopbob.com

Makers
for makers.

Three generations. One lineage. Tools that transmit knowledge forward.

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Foundations

01
Tool

A thing you use to get work done. The hammer. The scalpel. The jig. What matters is not what it is — it's what it lets you do.

02
Object

Anything a mind can work on. The metal. The patient. The problem. Whatever you are trying to change.

03
Work

What happens when a tool meets an object. Energy moves. Information moves. Something that was one way becomes another way.

04
Maker

Someone who changes things — and whose change keeps going after they stop. The tool they made still works. The knowledge they built still runs.

'Tool guys'
nails us.

Bob Bishop and his father, 1956
Bob & Dad — 1956

Bob Bishop and his father — Ann Arbor, 1956

The formal word

"What you make has to keep working after you stop. That's the whole test."

My great-grandfather Sebastian Langley was a carpenter born in Maybee, Michigan in 1865. He built the houses the people of the industrial revolution lived in, then moved to Jackson. His father Joseph came from Germany in the 1800s — the original name was Langle. I still have two of Sebastian's hand tools.

Sebastian's daughter Margaret married into the Bishop family. Her husband — my grandfather — was an Army Air Corps mechanic, then ran the floor at one of Jackson's great auto makers. My dad was president of a global GM service tool supplier — the operation that made tools for the people who built vehicles and refrigeration systems.

I made tools for surgery. Instruments, imaging systems, ways of sequencing a team so a complex operation runs without chaos. Not as a surgeon — as the person who builds what surgeons use. That's my version of the tool shop.

Five generations. Each one took what the person before them knew, used it, changed it, and passed it on. None of us invented the physics. We just kept the knowledge moving.

That is what tool guys means. We are in the business of making things that keep working after we stop.

The lineage

Five generations.
One constructor.

Generation I
1815–1900
Joseph Langle

German immigrant. Arrived in America mid-1800s. The original name was Langle — it became Langley crossing over. He brought the craft tradition that ran through every generation after him.

→
Generation II
1865–1942
Sebastian B. Langley

Carpenter. Born Maybee, Michigan. Moved to Jackson. He built the homes the people of the industrial revolution lived in. Two of his hand tools still exist.

→
Generation III
1910s–40s
Grandfather Bishop

Army Air Corps mechanic in the First World War. Then General Manager at one of Jackson's great auto makers — one of the great American car makers — until the Depression closed the factory. Post office on a veterans benefit for the rest of his working days.

→
Generation IV
1950s–90s
Robert William Bishop

President of a global GM service tool supplier. Made tools for the people who built vehicles and refrigeration systems. Metal, tolerances, focused production — in his hands.

→
Generation V
Now
Bob Bishop

Tools for surgery. Instruments, imaging systems, team methods. Not as a surgeon — as the person who builds what surgeons use. Trying to write it down so it doesn't disappear.

Makers
for makers.
It still
nails us.

Five generations of making things that keep working. That's where all of this started.