[8] American Machinist, Vol. 32, Part 2, pp. 821 and 868.

Take the slide-rest. It is clearly shown in the French encyclopedia of 1772, see Fig. 3, and even in an edition of 1717. Bramah, Bentham and Brunel, in England, and Sylvanus Brown,[9] in America, are all said to have invented it. David Wilkinson, of Pawtucket, R. I., was granted a patent for it in 1798.[10] But the invention has been, and will always be, credited to Henry Maudslay, of London. It is right that it should be, for he first designed and built it properly, developed its possibilities, and made it generally useful. The modern slide-rest is a lineal descendant from his.

[9] Goodrich: “History of Pawtucket,” pp. 47-48. Pawtucket, 1876.

[10] Ibid., p. 51.

Blanchard was by no means the first to turn irregular forms on a lathe. The old French rose engine lathe, shown in Fig. 4, embodied the idea, but Blanchard accomplished it in a way more mechanical, of a far wider range of usefulness, and his machine is in general use to this day.

To the third question as to why this development when once begun should have been so rapid, there are probably two answers. First, an entirely new demand for accurate tools arose during these years, springing from the inventions of Arkwright, Whitney, Watt, Fulton, Stephenson and others. The textile industries, the steam engine, railways, and the scores of industries they called into being, all called for better and stronger means of production. While the rapidity of the development was due partly to the pressure of this demand, a second element, that of cumulative experience, was present, and can be clearly traced. Wilkinson was somewhat of an exception, as he was primarily an iron master and not a tool builder, so his relationship to other tool builders is not so direct or clear. But the connection between Bramah, Maudslay, Clement, Whitworth and Nasmyth, is shown in the “genealogical” table in Fig. 5.

Bramah had a shop in London where, for many years, he manufactured locks and built hydraulic machinery and woodworking tools. Maudslay, probably the finest mechanician of his day, went to work for Bramah when only eighteen years old and became his foreman in less than a year. He left after a few years and started in for himself, later taking Field into partnership, and Maudslay & Field’s became one of the most famous shops in the world.

Sir Samuel Bentham, who was inspector general of the British navy, began the design of a set of machines for manufacturing pulley blocks at the Portsmouth navy yard. He soon met Marc Isambard Brunel, a brilliant young Royalist officer, who had been driven out of France during the Revolution, and had started working on block machinery through a conversation held at Alexander Hamilton’s dinner table while in America a few years before. Bentham saw the superiority of Brunel’s plans, substituted them for his own, and commissioned him to go ahead.

In his search for someone to build the machinery, Brunel was referred to Maudslay, then just starting in for himself. Maudslay built the machines, forty-four in all, and they were a brilliant success. There has been considerable controversy as to whether Bentham or Brunel designed them. While Maudslay’s skill appears in the practical details, the general scheme was undoubtedly Brunel’s. In a few of the machines Bentham’s designs seem to have been used, but he was able enough and generous enough to set aside most of his own designs for the better ones of Brunel.

Of the earlier tool builders, Maudslay was the greatest. He, more than any other, developed the slide-rest and he laid the basis for the lathe, planer and slotter. His powerful personality is brought out in Nasmyth’s autobiography written many years later. Nasmyth was a young boy, eager, with rare mechanical skill and one ambition, to go to London and work for the great Mr. Maudslay. He tells of their meeting, of the interest aroused in the older man, and of his being taken into Maudslay’s personal office to work beside him. It is a pleasing picture, the young man and the older one, two of the best mechanics in all England, working side by side, equally proud of each other.

Joseph Clement came to London and worked for Bramah as chief draftsman and as superintendent of his works. After Bramah’s death he went to Maudslay’s and later went into business for himself. He was an exquisite draftsman, a fertile inventor, and had a very important part in the development of the screw-cutting lathe and planer. Joseph Whitworth, the most influential tool builder of the nineteenth century, worked for Maudslay and for Clement and took up their work at the point where they left off. Under his influence machine tools were given a strength and precision which they had never had before. Richard Roberts was another pupil of Maudslay’s whose influence, though important, was not so great as that of the others.

We have an excellent example of what this succession meant. Nasmyth tells of the beautiful set of taps and dies which Maudslay made for his own use, and that he standardized the screw-thread practice of his own shop. Clement carried this further. He established a definite number of threads per inch for each size, extended the standardization of threads, and began the regular manufacture of dies and taps. He fluted the taps by means of milling cutters and made them with small shanks, so that they might drop through the tapped hole. Whitworth, taking up Clement’s work, standardized the screw threads for all England and brought order out of chaos.

Some account of the growth of machine tools in the hands of these men will be given later. Enough has been said here to show the cumulative effect of their experience, and its part in the industrial advance of the first half of the nineteenth century. Similar successions of American mechanics will be shown later.

Writing from the standpoint of fifty years ago, Smiles quotes Sir William Fairbairn: “‘The mechanical operations of the present day could not have been accomplished at any cost thirty years ago; and what was then considered impossible is now performed with an exactitude that never fails to accomplish the end in view.’ For this we are mainly indebted to the almost creative power of modern machine tools, and the facilities which they present for the production and reproduction of other machines.”[11]

[11] Smiles: “Industrial Biography,” p. 399.