BENTHAM AND BRUNEL
In the genealogical table shown in Fig. 5, Sir Samuel Bentham and
Sir Marc I. Brunel are indicated as having originated the famous
“Portsmouth Block Machinery,” which was built by Maudslay and which
first gave him his reputation as a tool builder. While Bentham was
primarily a naval administrator and Brunel a civil engineer, they were
among the first to grasp the principles of modern manufacturing and
embody them successfully. Both were men of distinction and each had an
interesting career.
Samuel Bentham, Fig. 9, was a brother of Jeremy Bentham, the famous
English publicist and writer on economics, and a step-brother of
Charles Abbott, speaker of the House of Commons. He was born in 1757,
went to the Westminster School, and later was a naval apprentice in
the Woolwich Arsenal. His tastes and his training led him toward the
administrative and constructive work of the navy, and for this he had
the best education available at that time. He went to sea after a final
year at the Naval College at Portsmouth; and in 1780, in consequence of
his abilities, was sent by Earl Howe, then first Lord of the Admiralty,
to visit the various ports of northern Europe. He went through the
great ports of Holland and the Baltic, eastward to St. Petersburg, and
was introduced at the Russian court by the British ambassador.
[Illustration: FIGURE 9. SIR SAMUEL BENTHAM
FROM AN OLD MINIATURE]
The Russians took to him kindly, as he was handsome, tall, and
distinguished in manner, inspired confidence, and made and held
friends. He was well received by the Empress Catherine, and soon
became a favorite of Prince Potemkin. He traveled over a greater part
of the empire from the Black Sea to the Arctic and as far east as
China, examining mining and engineering works. On his return to St.
Petersburg he fell in love with a wealthy heiress of the nobility. The
parents objected; but though the empress, who was interested, advised
an elopement, he gave it up as dishonorable and went away to Critcheff
in southern Russia as a lieutenant-colonel of engineers in the Russian
army. While there he took charge of Potemkin’s grossly mismanaged
factories in order to put them on a sound basis, an undertaking
suggestive of the twentieth-century efficiency engineer. In this he
was not wholly successful. In 1787 he built and equipped a flotilla
of ships, and in the following year distinguished himself in a naval
battle with the Turks, in which John Paul Jones was also engaged. One
of the vital elements in the fight was the use of the large guns built
by Bentham, which fired shells for the first time in naval warfare.
Nine Turkish ships were burned or sunk and 8000 men were killed or
taken prisoners. For his part in this battle Bentham was knighted and
made a brigadier-general.
There were few skilled artisans in Russia and almost none available in
the southern provinces--a Danish brass founder, an English watchmaker
and two or three sergeants who could write and draw were all he had.
This set Bentham at work on the problem of “transferring skill” by
means of machines, so that unskilled workmen might be made to produce
the same results as skilled labor.
While Bramah and Maudslay were working in London on their
metal-cutting tools for making locks, Bentham, in Russia, was
thinking out substantially the same problem in woodworking machinery.
He returned to England in 1791 and that year took out his first
patent. Certain suggestions which he made to the Admiralty about the
introduction of machinery into the dockyards led to his making an
extended inspection of the dockyards throughout the kingdom, and he
reported that immense savings were possible. The office of inspector
general was created for him and authority given him to put his
recommendations into effect.
For the next eighteen years he served the British navy. When he took
hold it was honeycombed with inefficiency and worse. His business-like
methods, his skill as an engineer and naval designer, and his fearless
integrity were elements in the preparedness of the British navy in the
Napoleonic wars. He was an intrepid enemy of red tape and graft and
soon made cordial enemies; but he was a good fighter, with no weak
spots in his armor, and it took many years to bring him down. In 1805
he was sent to St. Petersburg, and kept there on various pretexts for
two years. It was remarked by some about the Admiralty office, that so
high was their opinion of his talents they would be glad to give him
£6000 ($30,000) a year if by that means they would never see him again.
He returned in 1807 to find his office abolished and its functions
transferred to a board, of which he was made a member at an increased
salary. Here his power was diluted somewhat, but even this solution
was too strong and he was retired on a pension in 1812. For the next
fifteen years he lived in retirement in France. The years abroad
softened the rancor of his enemies and from his return to England in
1827 until his death, Bentham was in frequent and friendly consultation
with the navy officials. Bentham may well be considered as one of the
first and greatest of “efficiency experts.”[26]
[26] See the biography of Bentham, by William Lucas Sargant: “Essays
of a Birmingham Manufacturer,” Vol. I, No. V. London, 1869. Also,
“Memoirs of the late Brigadier-General Sir Samuel Bentham,” by Mary
S. Bentham, in “Papers and Practical Illustrations of Public Works.”
London, 1856.
The patent of 1791 referred to is not important, but it was followed by
another in 1793 in which was set forth the whole scheme of woodworking
machinery which had been maturing in Bentham’s mind. This has been
characterized as one of the most remarkable patents ever issued by the
British Patent Office. More than fifty years after, one of the Crown
judges said of it in summing up a case before him involving woodworking
machinery, that “the specification of his (i.e., Bentham’s) patent of
1793 is a perfect treatise on the subject; indeed, the only one worth
quoting that has to this day been written on the subject.”
Jeremy Bentham had revolutionized the prison system of England, and had
introduced the system of labor in penitentiaries which has become an
essential element in all modern penal systems. Woodworking was the most
available field of work, but the greater part of the prisoners were of
course unskilled, and Samuel Bentham was called upon to devise machines
to meet the need. The two brothers established a factory and began
making woodworking machinery for the prisons and dockyards.
The work for the dockyards soon took definite form. Pulley blocks
formed one of the important supplies of the navy. A single full-rigged
frigate used about 1500 and the Admiralty were purchasing at that time
about 100,000 yearly. This formed a large business in itself and one in
which the interchangeability that Bentham was continually urging was
especially desirable. On Bentham’s recommendation, a government factory
organized on a manufacturing basis and utilizing machinery had been
begun at Portsmouth and a few machines of his design already installed,
when Brunel, who had been working independently on block machinery, was
introduced to him.
Marc Isambard Brunel, Fig. 10, was a Norman Frenchman, born in 1769,
who was the despair of his father because he would not study to be a
priest and would persist in drawing and in making things. As a family
compromise he received a naval training and served as an officer for
six years. In 1793, his ship being paid off, he was in Paris. His
outspoken loyalty in one of the cafés on the very day when Louis XVI
was sentenced to the guillotine brought down upon him the anger of
the republicans present. He escaped in the confusion, spent the night
in hiding, and leaving Paris early the next morning, made his way
to Rouen. Here he hid for a time with M. Carpentier, the American
consul, in whose home he met a young English girl whom he afterwards
married. Six months later he sailed from Havre on a forged passport,
under the nose of a frigate searching for suspects, and landed in New
York only to find a French republican squadron lying in port. As he
was personally known to many of the officers and in danger of being
recognized, arrested and condemned as a deserter, he left the city at
once and went to Albany in the vague hope of finding M. Pharoux, a
friend who was undertaking the survey of a large tract of wild land
in the Black River valley, east of Lake Ontario. Brunel found him by
good chance, joined the party, and soon became its real leader. They
showed the capacity, which the French have always had, of working in
friendly relationship with the Indians, and their work was successfully
accomplished. Fifty years later there were still traditions among
Indians in the valley of a wonderful white man named “Bruné.”
[Illustration: FIGURE 10. SIR MARC ISAMBARD BRUNEL
FROM A PHOTOGRAPH BY WALKER, LTD., OF THE PORTRAIT IN THE NATIONAL
GALLERY, LONDON]
Brunel remained in America for over five years and was naturalized
as a citizen in 1796. During this time he was engaged on the
Hudson-Champlain canal and various river improvements. He was a friend
of Major L’Enfant, who planned the city of Washington and he submitted
one of the competitive designs for the original Capitol. He also
designed and built the old Park Theater in New York, which was burned
in 1821. He was appointed chief engineer of New York, built a cannon
foundry and had a part in planning the fortifications of the Narrows in
New York harbor.
He was gay, refined and a favorite among the emigrés who enlivened
New York society in the closing years of the eighteenth century. It
was at Alexander Hamilton’s dinner table that the first suggestion
of the block machinery came to him. He had been invited to meet a M.
Delabigarre, who had just arrived from England. M. Delabigarre had been
describing the method of making ship’s blocks and spoke of their high
and increasing cost. Brunei listened with attention and then pointed
out what he considered the defects of the method and suggested that the
mortises might be cut by machinery, two or three at a time. The shaping
machine he afterward used was conceived while he was at Fort Montgomery
in the highlands of the Hudson. Brunel left America for England early
in 1799 and remained in England the rest of his life. His marriage soon
after his arrival to Miss Kingdom, the girl whom he had met at Rouen,
doubtless gives the reason for this change.
Two months after reaching England, he took out a patent for a writing
and duplicating machine and he also invented a machine for twisting
cotton thread. Meantime he was working on the drawings for a complete
set of block machinery, and by 1801 he had made a working model of the
mortising and boring machines. He offered his plans to Fox & Taylor,
who held the navy contract for blocks. Mr. Taylor wrote in reply that
his father had spent many years developing their existing methods of
manufacture and they were perfectly satisfied with them. He added,
“I have no hope of anything better ever being discovered, and I am
convinced there cannot.”
Brunel, through introductions brought from America, then laid his
plans before Lord Spencer, of the Admiralty, and Sir Samuel Bentham.
Bentham, as we have seen, was already working on the same problem. He
saw at once the superiority of Brunel’s plans and, with the freedom
from jealousy and self-interest which characterized his whole career,
he recommended their adoption, with the result that Brunel was
commissioned to build and install his machines.
About sixty years ago there was a sharp controversy over the origin of
this Portsmouth machinery. Partisans of Bentham and Brunel each claimed
the entire credit for all of it. The fact is that some of Bentham’s
machines were used for the roughing out, but all the finishing work
was done on Brunel’s, and there is little doubt that the definite plan
of operations and all the more intricate machines were his. Bentham
conceived the enterprise and had it well under way. His broad-minded
and generous substitution of Brunel’s plans for his own was quite as
creditable to him as the execution of the whole work would have been.
While Brunel was a clever and original designer, he was not a skilled
mechanic. His plans called for a large number of refined and intricate
machines which were wholly new and he no sooner began actual work than
he felt the need of a mechanic capable of building them. Maudslay
had just started in for himself and was working in his little shop on
Oxford Street, with one helper. M. Bacquancourt, a friend of Brunel’s,
passed his door every day and was interested in the beautiful pieces
of workmanship he used to see from time to time in the shop window. At
his suggestion Brunel went to Maudslay, explained to him his designs,
and secured his help. There could hardly have been a better combination
than these two men. Maudslay’s wonderful skill as a mechanic and his
keen, practical intuition supplied the one element needed and together
they executed the entire set of machines, forty-four in all.[27]
[27] For a description of the Portsmouth Block Machinery, see
Tomlinson’s “Cyclopedia of Useful Arts,” Vol. I, pp. 139-146. London,
1852. Also, Ure’s “Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines,”
Vol. I, pp. 398-402; Seventh Edition. London, 1875; and Rees’
“Cyclopedia,” article “Machinery for Manufacturing Ship’s Blocks.”
The machinery was divided into four classes.
First. Sawing machines, both reciprocating and circular, for roughing
out the blocks.
Second. Boring, mortising, shaping and “scoring” machines for finishing
the blocks.
Third. Machines for turning and boring the sheaves, for riveting the
brass liner and finish-facing the sides. In the larger sizes small
holes were drilled on the joint and short wire pins riveted in to
prevent slipping between the liner and block.
Fourth. The iron pins on which the sheaves turned were hand forged in
dies, turned and polished.
In addition to these there were several machines for forming “dead
eyes,” or solid blocks without sheaves, used in the fixed rigging.
A detailed description of the entire set would be too long. A brief
description of one or two of the machines will serve to give some idea
of the others.
Fig. 11 is taken from an old wood-cut of the mortising machine.[28] A
model of it is shown in the background of the portrait of Brunel in the
National Gallery, reproduced opposite page 26. A pulley and flywheel
are connected by a cone clutch _M_ to a shaft _D_. At the front end of
this a crank and connecting-rod drive the reciprocating cutter head
from a point _a_. The chuck carrying the block, movable forward and
backward on guides, was operated by the feed screw _R_, a cam, and the
ratchet motion shown. A system of stops and weighted levers on the side
threw out the ratchet feed at the end of the cut, and the carriage was
returned by hand, using the crank _r_. The crosshead had two guiding
points, a double one below the driving point and a single one above it
at _F_, and made 150 strokes per minute. The chuck could take either
one or two blocks at a time.
[28] Tomlinson: “Cyclopedia,” Vol. I, p. 141.
Fig. 12 shows the shaping machine.[29] _Ten_ blocks were chucked
between two large, circular frames, the same working points being used
as in the last machine. The principle of establishing and adhering to
working points seems to have been clearly recognized. A cutter _g_ was
moved across the face of the blocks as they revolved, its motion being
governed by the handles _l_ and _G_ and a former _i_. One side of each
of the ten blocks was thus finished at a time. The blocks were then
indexed 90° by revolving the bevel _K_, which turned the wormshafts _d_
and rotated all the chucks simultaneously. The blocks were then faced
again in their new positions and the operation continued until the four
sides were finished. The strong curved bars at the top were provided
to protect the workman in case one of the blocks should let go. As
the momentum of the frame and blocks was considerable, a spring brake
was provided between the bearing and bevel-gear to bring them to rest
quickly.
[29] _Ibid._, Vol. I, p. 144.
[Illustration: FIGURE 11. BRUNEL’S MORTISING MACHINE]
[Illustration: FIGURE 12. BRUNEL’S SHAPING MACHINE]
Another well-designed machine “scored” the outside of the blocks for
the ropes or straps. Two disks with inserted steel cutters grooved
the blocks which were chucked on a swinging frame. The depth and path
of cut were governed by a steel former against which a roller on the
cutter shaft bore. In the metal working machines, under the fourth
group, cutters were used in which a short, round bar of tempered steel
was held by a binding screw in a holder of the lathe-tool type. From
the sketch of it shown by Holtzapffel, the whole device might almost be
used as an advertisement for a modern tool-holder for high-speed steel
cutters.
Enough has been said to show that these machines were thoroughly
modern in their conception and constituted a complete range of tools,
_each performing its part in a definite series of operations_. By this
machinery ten unskilled men did the work of 110 skilled workmen. When
the plant was in full running order in 1808 the output was over 130,000
blocks per year, with a value of over $250,000, an output greater than
that previously supplied by the six largest dockyards. It continued for
many years to supply all the blocks used by the Royal Navy, and was in
fact superseded only when wooden blocks themselves largely made way for
iron and steel ones.
Brunel devised other woodworking tools, but none so successful as
these. He started a mill at Battersea which burned down; his finances
became involved and he was thrown into prison for debt. He was freed
through a grant of $25,000 which friends secured from the government.
His later work was in the field of civil engineering--the most famous
work being the Thames tunnel. He was given the Legion of Honor in
1829, was knighted in 1841, and died in 1849.[30]
[30] For fuller information, see the biography of Sir Marc Isambard
Brunel by Richard Beamish, F.R.S. London, 1862.
His son, Sir Isambard K. Brunel, was also one of the foremost engineers
of England, a bridge and ship builder, railway engineer and rival of
Robert Stephenson. At the age of twenty-seven he was chief engineer of
the Great Western Railway, and built the steamer “Great Western” to
run from Bristol to New York as an extension of that railway system.
This was the first large iron ship, the first regular transatlantic
liner, and the first large steamship using the screw propeller. Its
success led to the building of the “Great Eastern” from his designs.
This ship was about 700 feet long and for nearly fifty years was the
largest one built. She was a disastrous failure financially and after
a varied career, which included the laying of the first transatlantic
cable, she was finally broken up. Brunel was a strong advocate of the
broad gauge and built the Great Western system with a 7-foot gauge,
which was ultimately changed to standard gauge. While a number of his
undertakings were failures financially, his chief fault seems to have
been that he was in advance of his generation.