JAMES NASMYTH
We know more of the life of Nasmyth than of any of the other tool
builders. Not only did Smiles give an account of him in “Industrial
Biography,”[81] but fortunately Nasmyth was induced in later life
to write his recollections, which were published in the form of an
autobiography, edited by Smiles.[82] With the exception of Sir William
Fairbairn, he is the only great engineer who has done this. His
intimate knowledge of the rise of tool building, the distinguished part
he himself had in it, and his keen and generous appreciation of others,
make his record valuable. We have already quoted him in connection with
Maudslay, and wherever possible will let him tell his own story.
[81] “Industrial Biography,” Chap. XV. Boston, 1864.
[82] “James Nasmyth, Engineer, An Autobiography,” edited by Samuel
Smiles. London, 1883.
Unlike most of the early mechanics, James Nasmyth came from a family
of distinction dating from the thirteenth century. They lost their
property in the wars of the Covenanters and his direct ancestors
took refuge in Edinburgh, leaving their impress on the city as the
architects and builders of many of its most famous and beautiful
buildings. Alexander Nasmyth, the father of James, was a well-known
artist, the founder of the Scotch School of Landscape Painting, and
a friend of Burns, Raeburn and Sir Walter Scott. He was a landscape
architect and enough of an engineer to be included in Walker’s
engraving of “The Eminent Men of Science Living in 1807-1808,”
reproduced in Fig. 8. He invented the “bow-string” truss in 1794,
the first one of which was erected over a deep ravine in the island
of St. Helena, and also the setting of rivets by pressure instead
of hammering. This last, by the way, was the result of trying to do
a surreptitious job on Sunday without outraging the fearsome Scotch
“Sawbath.” Alexander Nasmyth was one of the six men on the first
trip made on Dalswinton Loch, October 14, 1788, by the steamboat
built by Symington for Patrick Miller. This was the second trip of a
steam-propelled vessel, the first one being that of John Fitch on the
Delaware, August 22, 1787. It was an iron boat with double hulls and
made about five miles an hour. It barely escaped being the first iron
vessel, as Wilkinson’s iron boat on the Severn was launched less than a
year before. The picture of this trial trip which has come down to us
was made by Alexander Nasmyth at the time.[83]
[83] _Ibid._, pp. 28-31.
James Nasmyth was born in 1808, the tenth in a family of eleven
children. Like all of his brothers and sisters, he inherited his
father’s artistic tastes. If he had not been an engineer he would
probably have become distinguished as an artist. He was ambidextrous,
and to the end of his life his skill with his pencil was a constant
source of pleasure and convenience. The notebook in which the later
record of his mathematical ideas is contained, is crowded with funny
little sketches, landscapes, little devils and whimsical figures
running in and out among the calculations. The leaf in this book on
which he made his first memorandum of the steam hammer is shown in Fig.
23. In 1817, Watt, then in his eighty-first year, visited Edinburgh and
was entertained at the Earl of Buchan’s, where Alexander Nasmyth met
him at dinner. Watt delighted all with his kindly talk, and astonished
them with the extent and profundity of his information. The following
day Watt visited Nasmyth to examine his artistic and other works. James
Nasmyth, a nine-year-old boy, returning from school, met him at the
doorstep as he was leaving, and never forgot the tall, bent figure of
“the Great Engineer.”
[Illustration: FIGURE 22. JAMES NASMYTH
FROM AN ETCHING BY PAUL RAJON]
Nasmyth’s father had a private workshop which was well equipped for
those days. Nasmyth played there from childhood and had mastered
the use of all the tools while still a schoolboy. “By means of my
father’s excellent foot lathe,” he says, “I turned out spinning tops
in capital style, so much so that I became quite noted amongst my
school companions. They would give any price for them. The peeries
were turned with perfect accuracy, and the steel shod, or spinning
pivot, was centered so as to correspond with the heaviest diameter at
the top. They could spin twice as long as the bought peeries. When at
full speed they would ‘sleep,’ that is, turn round without a particle
of waving. This was considered high art as regarded top-spinning.”[84]
He established a brisk business in these, in small brass cannon, and
especially in large cellar keys, which he converted into a sort of hand
cannon, with a small touch-hole bored into the barrel and a sliding
brass collar which allowed them to be loaded, primed, and then carried
around in the pocket.
[84] _Ibid._, p. 89.
He haunted all the shops and foundries in the neighborhood, making
friends with the skilled workmen and absorbing the mysteries of foundry
work, forging, hardening and tempering, and those arts which were
handed down from man to man. Speaking of Patterson’s old shop, Nasmyth
says: “To me it was the most instructive school of practical mechanics.
Although I was only about thirteen at the time, I used to lend a hand,
in which hearty zeal made up for want of strength. I look back on these
days, especially to the Saturday afternoons spent in the workshops of
this admirably conducted iron foundry, as a most important part of my
education as a mechanical engineer. I did not _read_ about such things;
for words were of little use. But I saw and handled, and thus all the
ideas in connection with them became permanently rooted in my mind....
“One of these excellent men, with whom I was frequently brought into
contact, was William Watson. He took special charge of all that related
to the construction and repairs of steam engines, waterwheels, and
millwork generally. He was a skillful designer and draughtsman and an
excellent pattern maker. His designs were drawn in a bold and distinct
style, on large deal boards, and were passed into the hands of the
mechanics to be translated by them into actual work.”[85]
[85] _Ibid._, p. 92.
After telling of various workmen, Nasmyth says: “One of the most
original characters about the foundry, however, was Johnie Syme.
He took charge of the old Boulton & Watt steam engine, which gave
motion to the machinery of the works.... Johnie was a complete
incarnation of technical knowledge. He was the Jack-of-all-trades of
the establishment; and the standing counsel in every out-of-the-way
case of managing and overcoming mechanical difficulties. He was the
superintendent of the boring machines. In those days the boring
of a steam engine cylinder was considered high art _in excelsis_!
Patterson’s firm was celebrated for the accuracy of its boring.
“I owe Johnie Syme a special debt of gratitude, as it was he who first
initiated me into that most important of all technical processes in
practical mechanism--the art of hardening and tempering steel.”[86]
From another of his friends, Tom Smith, Nasmyth picked up the rudiments
of practical chemistry, as it was then understood.
[86] _Ibid._, p. 93.
Traveling with his father from time to time, he had good opportunities
for meeting many distinguished engineers and of visiting the great
iron works, the most famous of which was the Carron Iron Works. “The
Carron Iron Works,” he writes, “are classic ground to engineers.
They are associated with the memory of Roebuck, Watt, and Miller of
Dalswinton. For there, Roebuck and Watt began the first working steam
engine; Miller applied the steam engine to the purposes of navigation,
and invented the Carronade gun. The works existed at an early period
in the history of British iron manufacture. Much of the machinery
continued to be of wood. Although effective in a general way it was
monstrously cumbrous. It gave the idea of vast power and capability of
resistance, while it was far from being so in reality. It was, however,
truly imposing and impressive in its effect upon strangers. When seen
partially lit up by the glowing masses of white-hot iron, with only the
rays of bright sunshine gleaming through the holes in the roof, and the
dark, black, smoky vaults in which the cumbrous machinery was heard
rumbling away in the distance--while the moving parts were dimly seen
through the murky atmosphere, mixed with the sounds of escaping steam
and rushes of water; with the half-naked men darting about with masses
of red-hot iron and ladles full of molten cast-iron--it made a powerful
impression upon the mind.”[87]
[87] _Ibid._, p. 109.
By the time he was seventeen Nasmyth had become a skilled model maker.
While he was still attending lectures in the Edinburgh School of Arts
and in the University, he had built up quite a brisk business in engine
models, for which he charged £10 each. He made his brass castings in
his own bedroom at night, arranging a furnace in his grate. He had a
secret box of moulding sand and rammed his patterns gently so as not to
awaken his father who slept below. In the morning the room would be all
clean and gave no indication that it was serving for a foundry as well
as a bedroom, and by some miracle he managed to complete his practical
education without burning down the house. In 1827, when he was
nineteen, he built a steam road carriage which ran about the streets of
Edinburgh for many months, but the condition of the Scotch roads was
such as to make a machine of this kind almost useless. When he went to
London he broke it up, and sold the engine and boiler for £67.
From inspecting the engines constructed by different makers, Nasmyth
became impressed with the superiority of those turned out by the
Carmichaels of Dundee. “I afterwards found,” he writes, “that the
Carmichaels were among the first of the Scottish engine makers who gave
due attention to the employment of improved mechanical tools, with the
object of producing accurate work with greater ease, rapidity, and
economy, than could possibly be effected by the hand labor of even the
most skillful workmen. I was told that the cause of the excellence
of the Carmichaels’ work was not only in the ability of the heads of
the firm, but in their employment of the best engineers’ tools. Some
of their leading men had worked at Maudslay’s machine shop in London,
the fame of which had already reached Dundee, and Maudslay’s system
of employing machine tools had been imported into the northern steam
factory.”[88] These reports built up an ambition, which developed into
a passion, to go to London and work in Maudslay’s shop under “this
greatest of mechanics.”
[88] _Ibid._, p. 123.
Consequently, in the spring of 1829, he went with his father to London
and made application to Maudslay to work with him as an apprentice.
Maudslay told them in the friendliest way, but unmistakeably, that he
had had no satisfaction from gentleman apprentices and that he had
definitely settled that he would never employ one again. He showed them
about his shop, however, and began to melt when he saw the boy’s keen
interest and intelligent appreciation of everything about him. Nasmyth
had brought with him some of his drawings and one of his engine models.
At the end of the visit he mustered courage to ask Maudslay if he would
look at them. The next day Maudslay and his partner looked them over.
“I waited anxiously. Twenty long minutes passed. At last he entered
the room, and from a lively expression in his countenance I observed
in a moment that the great object of my long cherished ambition had
been attained! He expressed, in good round terms, his satisfaction at
my practical ability as a workman engineer and mechanical draughtsman.
Then, opening the door which led from his library into his beautiful
private workshop, he said, ‘This is where I wish you to work, beside
me, as my assistant workman. From what I have seen, there is no need of
an apprenticeship in your case.’[89]
[89] _Ibid._, p. 129.
“Mr. Maudslay seemed at once to take me into his confidence. He treated
me in the most kindly manner--not as a workman or an apprentice, but
as a friend. I was an anxious listener to everything that he said;
and it gave him pleasure to observe that I understood and valued his
conversation. The greatest treat of all was in store for me. He showed
me his exquisite collection of taps and dies and screw-tackle, which
he had made with the utmost care for his own service. They rested in a
succession of drawers near to the bench where he worked....
“He proceeded to dilate upon the importance of the uniformity of
screws. Some may call it an improvement, but it might almost be called
a revolution in mechanical engineering which Mr. Maudslay introduced.
Before his time no system had been followed in proportioning the
number of threads of screws to their diameter. Every bolt and nut was
thus a specialty in itself, and neither possessed nor admitted of any
community with its neighbors. To such an extent had this practice been
carried that all bolts and their corresponding nuts had to be specially
marked as belonging to each other....
“None but those who lived in the comparatively early days of machine
manufacture can form an adequate idea of the annoyance, delay, and
cost of this utter want of system, or can appreciate the vast services
rendered to mechanical engineering by Mr. Maudslay, who was the first
to introduce the practical measures necessary for its remedy.”[90]
[90] _Ibid._, pp. 131-132.
There was no place in all England where Nasmyth could have learned
more. He was in close personal contact with one of the best mechanics
in the world. He had Maudslay’s warmest personal interest and heard
all the discussions of the engineers and famous men who used to come
to the workshop. “Among Mr. Maudslay’s most frequent visitors was Gen.
Sir Samuel Bentham, Mr. Barton, director of the Royal Mint, Mr. Bryan
Donkin, Mr. Faraday, and Mr. Chantrey, the sculptor. As Mr. Maudslay
wished me to be at hand to give him any necessary assistance, I had the
opportunity of listening to the conversation between him and these
distinguished visitors. Sir Samuel Bentham called very often. He had
been associated with Maudslay during the contrivance and construction
of the block machinery. He was brother of the celebrated Jeremy
Bentham, and he applied the same clear common sense to mechanical
subjects which the other had done to legal, social and political
questions.
“It was in the highest degree interesting and instructive to hear
these two great pioneers in the history and application of mechanics
discussing the events connected with the block-making machinery. In
fact, Maudslay’s connection with the subject had led to the development
of most of our modern engineering tools. They may since have been
somewhat altered in arrangement, but not in principle. Scarcely a
week passed without a visit from the General. He sat in the beautiful
workshop, where he always seemed so happy. It was a great treat to
hear him and Maudslay fight their battles over again, in recounting
the difficulties, both official and mechanical, over which they had so
gloriously triumphed.”[91]
[91] _Ibid._, pp. 151-152.
While with Maudslay, Nasmyth designed and built an index milling
machine for finishing the sides of hexagon nuts. After Maudslay’s death
in 1831, he remained a few months with Mr. Field to finish some work in
hand, and then left to start in business for himself. Nasmyth speaks in
the kindliest terms of Mr. Field, and doubtless would have had more to
say about him if his relationship with Maudslay had not been so close.
Joshua Field was a man to be appreciated. He was a draftsman at the
Portsmouth dockyard when the block machinery was being built, and
showed so clear a grasp of the work in hand that Bentham had him
transferred to the Admiralty at Whitehall. In 1804 he left the service
and went to Maudslay’s, when he was at Margaret Street and employed
about eighty men. He rose steadily, was taken into partnership in 1822,
at the same time as Maudslay’s eldest son, and was the senior partner
after Maudslay’s death when the firm was at the height of its long
prosperity. He was one of those consulted in the laying of the Atlantic
cable and in the designing of machinery for doing it.
“Mr. Field was one of the founders of the Institution of Civil
Engineers, the origin of which was very humble. About the year 1816,
Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, who was then a pupil of the late Mr. Bryan
Donkin, suggested to Mr. Field the idea of forming a society of young
engineers, for their mutual improvement in mechanical and engineering
science; and the earliest members were Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, Mr.
William Nicholson Maudslay, and Mr. Joshua Field. To these three were
shortly added Mr. James Jones, Mr. Charles Collinge, and Mr. James
Ashwell. They met occasionally in a room hired for the purpose, and to
them were soon attracted others having the same objects in view. Mr.
Field was the first chairman of the Institution, being elected to that
post on the sixth of January, 1818. Subsequently he became, in 1837, a
vice-president, an office he filled until he was elected president in
1848, and in 1849, and he continued to the last to be an active member
and warm supporter of the Institution.”[92] Mr. Field did everything in
his power to give Nasmyth a start, allowing him to make the castings
for some machine tools which he proposed to finish later for use in his
own plant.
[92] Memoir, in “Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers,”
Vol. XXIII, p. 491. 1863.
Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh and took temporary quarters in a little
outbuilding 16 feet by 24 feet, within a few minutes’ walk of his
father’s home. He hired one mechanic, Archie Torry, who remained with
him the rest of his life and became one of his principal foremen. His
power plant consisted of one husky laborer who turned a crank. Together
they finished up the castings brought from Maudslay & Field’s, making
first a lathe, then a planer 20 inches by 36 inches, and with these a
few boring and drilling machines. He carried the expense of this by
doing some work for an enthusiastic inventor of a wonderful rotary
steam engine. Nasmyth honorably informed the inventor that his machine
would not work, but as the inventor was bent on spending his money,
Nasmyth executed the work for him, and the proceeds enabled him to
build his machinery.
In a few months he was ready to begin. He went to Liverpool and
Manchester looking for a location, and soon made many powerful friends
in both cities. In 1831 he rented a single floor in Manchester, 27 feet
by 130 feet, with power, and ten days later Archie followed with the
tools. It was a particularly fortunate time and place for starting such
an enterprise. The success of the Liverpool & Manchester Railway, just
opened, created a great demand for locomotives and for machine tools.
Orders came in fast, and the planer especially was busy all the time.
If its profits were anything like those of Clement’s planer, it must
have been a very heavy earner. As the business grew, Nasmyth added more
tools, always making them himself and steadily improving their design
and construction.
He soon outgrew his quarters; and in 1836 he secured land at
Patricroft, a mile or so outside of the city, admirably located between
the new railway and the Bridgewater Canal, and built a new plant which
he called the Bridgewater Foundry. In the new foundry he used the first
worm-geared tilting pouring-ladle. As it eliminated a common and very
dangerous source of accidents, he refrained from patenting it and in a
short time its use was universal. He formed a partnership with Holbrook
Gaskell, who took the business end of the enterprise, and the firm of
Nasmyth & Gaskell had a very prosperous career until, sixteen years
later, Mr. Gaskell was forced to retire on account of ill health.
Nasmyth built machine tools of all kinds. In 1836 he invented the
shaper which was long known as “Nasmyth’s Steel Arm.”
Descriptions and illustrations of some of Nasmyth’s tools may be found
at the end of his autobiography,[93] in Buchanan’s “Mill Work,”[94]
and in the _American Machinist_.[95] He patented but few of his
inventions, relying for protection mainly upon the reputation which
he soon established. “In mechanical structures and contrivances,”
he says, “I have always endeavored to attain the desired purpose by
the employment of the fewest parts, casting aside every detail not
absolutely necessary, and guarding carefully against the intrusion
of mere traditional forms and arrangements. The latter are apt to
insinuate themselves, and to interfere with that simplicity and
directness of action which is in all cases so desirable a quality in
mechanical structures. Plain common sense should be apparent in the
general design, as in the form and arrangement of the details; and a
character of severe utility pervade the whole, accompanied with as much
attention to gracefulness of form as is consistent with the nature and
purpose of the structure.”[96] This was written in later life. While
his later work was in thorough conformity with these principles, it was
some time before he freed himself from the tradition of Greek style in
machine frames. He was one of those, however, who led the way into the
more correct practice indicated above, though he was probably not so
influential in this direction as Whitworth.
[93] p. 400 _et seq._
[94] Volume of Plates.
[95] Oct. 14, 1909, p. 654.
[96] Autobiography, p. 439.
His greatest invention unquestionably was that of the steam hammer,
which came about in an interesting way. He had built a number of
locomotives for the Great Western Railway. This railway operated a line
of steamers from Bristol to New York and was planning a ship larger
and faster than any then built, to be called “The Great Britain.” It
was to be a side-wheeler and the plans called for a large and heavy
paddle shaft, 30 inches in diameter. Mr. Humphries, its designer,
wrote to Nasmyth asking for help, saying so large a shaft could not be
forged with any of the hammers then in use. Nasmyth saw at once the
limitations of the prevailing tilt hammer--which was simply a smith’s
hand hammer, enlarged, with a range so small that it “gagged” on
large work,--and that the design of large hammers must be approached
in an entirely new way. “The obvious remedy was to contrive some
method by which a ponderous block of iron should be lifted to a
sufficient height above the object on which it was desired to strike
a blow, and then to let the block fall down upon the forging, guiding
it in its descent by such simple means as should give the required
precision in the percussive action of the falling mass. Following up
this idea,” he writes, “I got out my ‘Scheme Book,’ on the pages of
which I generally thought out, with the aid of pen and pencil, such
mechanical adaptations as I had conceived in my mind, and was thereby
enabled to render them visible. I then rapidly sketched out my steam
hammer, having it all clearly before me in mind’s eye. In little more
than half an hour after receiving Mr. Humphries’s letter narrating
his unlooked-for difficulty, I had the whole contrivance, in all its
executant details, before me in a page of my Scheme Book, a reduced
photograph copy of which I append to this description. (See Fig. 23.)
The date of this first drawing was the twenty-fourth of November,
1839....”[97]
[97] _Ibid._, p. 240.
[Illustration: FIGURE 23. FIRST SKETCH OF THE STEAM HAMMER NOV. 24,
1839]
[Illustration: FIGURE 24. MODEL OF THE FIRST STEAM HAMMER
IN THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM, LONDON]
“Rude and rapidly sketched out as it was, this, my first delineation of
the steam hammer, will be found to comprise all the essential elements
of the invention.[98] Every detail of the drawing retains to this day
the form and arrangement which I gave to it forty-three years ago. I
believed that the steam hammer would prove practically successful; and
I looked forward to its general employment in the forging of heavy
masses of iron. It is no small gratification to me now, when I look
over my rude and hasty first sketch, to find that I hit the mark so
exactly, not only in the general structure but in the details; and
that the invention as I then conceived it and put it into shape,
still retains its form and arrangements intact in the thousands of
steam hammers that are now doing good service in the mechanical arts
throughout the civilized world.”[99]
[98] Compare Nasmyth’s sketch, Fig. 23, with Fig. 24, which was
taken from the model of his first hammer now in the South Kensington
Museum (Exhibit No. 1571). The description of it in the catalog is as
follows:
“It consists of a base plate with a large central opening through
which projects the top of the anvil, so that a blow on the anvil
is not transmitted to the base plate. On the plate are secured two
standards which form guides for the hammer-head or tup, and also
support an overhead cylinder, the piston of which is connected with
the tup by a piston rod passing through the bottom of the cylinder.
Steam is admitted to this cylinder by a stop valve in the form of
a slide, and then by a slide valve on the front of the cylinder,
which by a hand lever can be moved so as to let steam in below the
piston and so raise the heavy tup. When it is lifted to a height
proportionate to the energy of the blow required, the steam is by the
slide valve permitted to escape and the hammer falls upon the forging
placed on the anvil. The cylinder is therefore only single-acting,
but the top is closed, and a ring of holes communicating with the
exhaust pipe is provided at a little distance down inside. In
this way an air cushion is formed which helps to start the piston
downwards when a long stroke is being taken, and also the steam below
the piston is permitted to escape when the tup has been lifted as
high as it can safely go. Soon after its invention the steam hammer
was greatly increased in power by accelerating the fall of the tup by
admitting steam above the piston in the downstroke and so changing
it into the usual double-acting steam hammer.” Cat. Machinery
Collection, Part II, p. 255.
[99] Autobiography, p. 242.
The shaft, however, was never built. Screw propulsion was just coming
into use; the design of the vessel was changed, and the whole scheme
lapsed. A year or so later, M. Schneider, the French iron master of
Creuzot, and his engineer, M. Bourdon, visited Bridgewater while
Nasmyth happened to be away. Mr. Gaskell, after taking them about the
plant, showed them the Scheme Book and pointed out the sketch of the
hammer, telling them of the purpose for which it was intended. They
were impressed with it and took careful notes and sketches of its
details. Nasmyth was informed of their visit upon his return, but knew
nothing of their having taken sketches of the hammer.
In 1842 Nasmyth visited France, and was cordially received at Creuzot
and shown about the works. “On entering,” he writes, “one of the things
that particularly struck me was the excellence of a large wrought-iron
marine engine single crank, forged with a remarkable degree of
exactness in its general form. I observed also that the large eye of
the crank had been punched and drifted with extraordinary smoothness
and truth. I inquired of M. Bourdon ‘how that crank had been forged?’
His immediate reply was, ‘_It was forged by your steam hammer!_’...
He told me ... that he had taken careful notes and sketches, and that
among the first things he did after his return to Creuzot was to put
in hand the necessary work for the erection of a steam hammer.... M.
Bourdon conducted me to the forge department of the works, that I
might, as he said, ‘_see my own child_’; and there it was, in truth--a
thumping child of my brain.”[100] Fortunately it was still time to save
his patent rights. He moved rapidly and in June, 1842, two months after
his visit to Creuzot, a patent was obtained.[101]. The steam hammer
soon found its way into all the large shops of the world and greatly
increased Nasmyth’s already comfortable fortune. Nasmyth transferred
his United States patent to S. V. Merrick of Philadelphia, who
introduced the hammer into the American iron works.
[100] _Ibid._, pp. 246-247. The self-acting valve motion for the
steam hammer was invented by Mr. Wilson, when Nasmyth was absent
on business. Wilson was manager at Patricroft and later became a
partner. It was much used for a time but with the advent of balanced
piston-valves the hand-operated gear supplanted it. Nasmyth’s
invention of the hammer was denied by M. Schneider in 1871. For
fuller discussion of the history of this hammer see _London
Engineer_, May 16, 1890, and a pamphlet by T. S. Rowlandson, entitled
“History of the Steam Hammer.” Manchester, 1866.
[101] No. 9382, June 9, 1842.
Besides work on the hammer and machine tools, Nasmyth made a number
of inventions of interest. While still with Maudslay he invented the
flexible shaft made of a coiled spring, and speaks with amusement at
his finding the same idea in a dental engine many years later credited
as an American invention. He invented the ball-and-socket joint for
shafting hangers and also the single wedge gate valve. His steam
piledriver, an adaptation of the steam hammer, was the invention in
which he seems to have taken the most satisfaction. He was working out
a method of puddling iron with a blast of steam when he was eclipsed
by Bessemer’s brilliant invention, in 1855, of the air blast. Nasmyth
was a member of the Small Arms Committee which remodeled the Small Arms
Factory at Enfield. His connection with this will be taken up in the
consideration of the rise of interchangeable manufacture.
Nasmyth retired from business in 1856, bought an estate in Kent,
and spent the remainder of his life in travel and in his studies in
astronomy. He was deeply interested in this study from boyhood. Before
he was twenty he had built an excellent 6-inch reflecting telescope,
and it was he who aroused Maudslay’s interest in the subject. He had
a 10-inch telescope at Patricroft and a large one at Hammersfield. He
began his study of the moon in 1842, and received a medal for his work
at the Exhibition of 1851. His book, “The Moon, Considered as a Planet,
a World, and a Satellite,” published in 1874, in conjunction with James
Carpenter, the result of his thirty-two years of work, is authoritative
today.
Nasmyth died in 1890 at the age of eighty-two. He was much more than a
splendid mechanic. His personal charm and quality of mind can best be
appreciated by reading his own story. This chapter will have served its
purpose if it induces the reader to read the autobiography from which
we have quoted so freely.