In 1831, the mention of lathes, drilling machines, and screwing
machines brings me very nearly to the end of the list of the machine
tools used by turners and fitters, and at that time many lathes were
without slide rests. The boiler-maker had then his punching-press and
shearing machine; the smith, leaving on one side his forges and their
bellows, had nothing but hand tools, and the limit of these was a huge
hammer, with two handles, requiring two men to work it. In anchor
manufacture, it is true, a mechanical drop-hammer, known as a
Hercules, was employed, while in iron works, the Helve and the Tilt
hammer were in use. For ordinary smith's work, however, there were, as
has been said, practically no machine tools at all.
This paucity or absence in some trades, as we have seen, of machine
tools, involved the need of very considerable skill on the part of the
workman. It required the smith to be a man not only of great muscular
power, but to be possessed of an accurate eye and a correct judgment,
in order to produce the forgings which were demanded of him, and to
make the sound work that was needed, especially when that soundness
was required in shafts, and in other pieces which, in those days, were
looked upon as of magnitude; which, indeed, they were, relatively to
the tools which could be brought to operate upon them. The
boiler-maker in his work had to trust almost entirely to the eye for
correctness of form and for regularity of punching, while all parts of
engines and machines which could not be dealt with in the lathe, in
the drilling, or in the screwing machine, had to be prepared by the
use of the chisel and the file.
At the present day, the turning and fitting shops are furnished not
only with the slide lathe, self acting in both directions, and
screw-cutting, the drilling-machine, and the screwing machine, but
with planing machines competent to plane horizontally, vertically, or
at an angle; shaping machines, rapidly reciprocating, and dealing with
almost any form of work; nut shaping machines, slot drilling
machines, and slotting machines, while the drills have become multiple
and radial; and the accuracy of the work is insured by testing on
large surface plates, and by the employment of Whitworth internal and
external standard gauges.
The boiler maker's tools now comprise the steam, compressed air,
hydraulic or other mechanical riveter, rolls for the bending of plates
while cold into the needed cylindrical or conical forms, multiple
drills for the drilling of rivet holes, planing machines to plane the
edges of the plates, ingenious apparatus for flanging them, thereby
dispensing with one row of rivets out of two, and roller expanders for
expanding the tubes in locomotive and in marine boilers; while the
punching press, where still used, is improved so as to make the holes
for seams of rivets in a perfect line, and with absolute accuracy of
pitch.
With respect to the smith's shop, all large pieces of work are now
manipulated under heavy Nasmyth or other steam hammers; while smaller
pieces of work are commonly prepared either in forging machines or
under rapidly moving hammers, and when needed in sufficient numbers
are made in dies. And applicable to all the three industries of the
fitting shop, the boiler shop, and the smith's shop, and also to that
other industry carried on in the foundry, are the traveling and swing
cranes, commonly worked by shafting, or by quick moving ropes for the
travelers, and by hydraulic power or by steam engines for the swing
cranes. It may safely be said, that without the aid of these
implements, it would be impossible to handle the weights that are met
with in machinery of the present day.
I now come to one class of machine which, humble and small as it is,
has probably had a greater effect upon industry and upon domestic life
than almost any other. I mean