Tools, like everything else, had small beginnings. With the primitive

stone-hammer and chisel very little could be done. The felling of a

tree would occupy a workman a month, unless helped by the destructive

action of fire. Dwellings could not be built, the soil could not be

tilled, clothes could not be fashioned and made, and the hewing out of

a boat was so tedious a process that the wood must have been far gone

in decay before it could be launched. It was a great step in advance

to discover the art of working in metals, more especially in steel, one

of the few metals capable of taking a sharp edge and keeping it. From

the date of this discovery, working in wood and stone would be found

comparatively easy; and the results must speedily have been felt not

only in the improvement of man's daily food, but in his domestic and

social condition. Clothing could then be made, the primitive forest

could be cleared and tillage carried on; abundant fuel could be

obtained, dwellings erected, ships built, temples reared; every

improvement in tools marking a new step in the development of the human

intellect, and a further stage in the progress of human civilization.

The earliest tools were of the simplest possible character, consisting

principally of modifications of the wedge; such as the knife, the

shears (formed of two knives working on a joint), the chisel, and the

axe. These, with the primitive hammer, formed the principal

stock-in-trade of the early mechanics, who were handicraftsmen in the

literal sense of the word. But the work which the early craftsmen in

wood, stone, brass, and iron, contrived to execute, sufficed to show

how much expertness in the handling of tools will serve to compensate

for their mechanical imperfections. Workmen then sought rather to aid

muscular strength than to supersede it, and mainly to facilitate the

efforts of manual skill. Another tool became added to those mentioned

above, which proved an additional source of power to the workman. We

mean the Saw, which was considered of so much importance that its

inventor was honoured with a place among the gods in the mythology of

the Greeks. This invention is said to have been suggested by the

arrangement of the teeth in the jaw of a serpent, used by Talus the

nephew of Daedalus in dividing a piece of wood. From the

representations of ancient tools found in the paintings at Herculaneum

it appears that the frame-saw used by the ancients very nearly

resembled that still in use; and we are informed that the tools

employed in the carpenters' shops at Nazareth at this day are in most

respects the same as those represented in the buried Roman city.

Another very ancient tool referred to in the Bible and in Homer was the

File, which was used to sharpen weapons and implements. Thus the

Hebrews "had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the

forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads." [1] When to these

we add the adze, plane-irons, the anger, and the chisel, we sum up the

tools principally relied on by the early mechanics for working in wood

and iron.

Such continued to be the chief tools in use down almost to our own day.

The smith was at first the principal tool-maker; but special branches

of trade were gradually established, devoted to tool-making. So long,

however, as the workman relied mainly on his dexterity of hand, the

amount of production was comparatively limited; for the number of

skilled workmen was but small. The articles turned out by them, being

the product of tedious manual labour, were too dear to come into common

use, and were made almost exclusively for the richer classes of the

community. It was not until machinery had been invented and become

generally adopted that many of the ordinary articles of necessity and

of comfort were produced in sufficient abundance and at such prices as

enabled them to enter into the consumption of the great body of the

people.

But every improver of tools had a long and difficult battle to fight;

for any improvement in their effective power was sure to touch the

interests of some established craft. Especially was this the case with

machines, which are but tools of a more complete though complicated

kind than those above described.

Take, for instance, the case of the Saw. The tedious drudgery of

dividing timber by the old fashioned hand-saw is well known. To avoid

it, some ingenious person suggested that a number of saws should be

fixed to a frame in a mill, so contrived as to work with a

reciprocating motion, upwards and downwards, or backwards and forwards,

and that this frame so mounted should be yoked to the mill wheel, and

the saws driven by the power of wind or water. The plan was tried,

and, as may readily be imagined, the amount of effective work done by

this machine-saw was immense, compared with the tedious process of

sawing by hand.

It will be observed, however, that the new method must have seriously

interfered with the labour of the hand-sawyers; and it was but natural

that they should regard the establishment of the saw-mills with

suspicion and hostility. Hence a long period elapsed before the

hand-sawyers would permit the new machinery to be set up and worked.

The first saw-mill in England was erected by a Dutchman, near London,

in 1663, but was shortly abandoned in consequence of the determined

hostility of the workmen. More than a century passed before a second

saw-mill was set up; when, in 1767, Mr. John Houghton, a London

timber-merchant, by the desire and with the approbation of the Society

of Arts, erected one at Limehouse, to be driven by wind. The work was

directed by one James Stansfield, who had gone over to Holland for the

purpose of learning the art of constructing and managing the sawing

machinery. But the mill was no sooner erected than a mob assembled and

razed it to the ground. The principal rioters having been punished,

and the loss to the proprietor having been made good by the nation, a

new mill was shortly after built, and it was suffered to work without

further molestation.

Improved methods of manufacture have usually had to encounter the same

kind of opposition. Thus, when the Flemish weavers came over to

England in the seventeenth century, bringing with them their skill and

their industry, they excited great jealousy and hostility amongst the

native workmen. Their competition as workmen was resented as an

injury, but their improved machinery was regarded as a far greater

source of mischief. In a memorial presented to the king in 1621 we

find the London weavers complaining of the foreigners' competition, but

especially that "they have made so bould of late as to devise engines

for working of tape, lace, ribbin, and such like, wherein one man doth

more among them than 7 Englishe men can doe; so as their cheap sale of

commodities beggereth all our Englishe artificers of that trade, and

enricheth them." [2]

At a much more recent period new inventions have had to encounter

serious rioting and machine-breaking fury. Kay of the fly-shuttle,

Hargreaves of the spinning-jenny, and Arkwright of the spinning-frame,

all had to fly from Lancashire, glad to escape with their lives.

Indeed, says Mr. Bazley, "so jealous were the people, and also the

legislature, of everything calculated to supersede men's labour, that

when the Sankey Canal, six miles long, near Warrington, was authorized

about the middle of last century, it was on the express condition that

the boats plying on it should be drawn by men only!" [3] Even improved

agricultural tools and machines have had the same opposition to

encounter; and in our own time bands of rural labourers have gone from

farm to farm breaking drill-ploughs, winnowing, threshing, and other

machines, down even to the common drills,--not perceiving that if their

policy had proved successful, and tools could have been effectually

destroyed, the human race would at once have been reduced to their

teeth and nails, and civilization summarily abolished.[4] It is, no

doubt, natural that the ordinary class of workmen should regard with

prejudice, if not with hostility, the introduction of machines

calculated to place them at a disadvantage and to interfere with their

usual employments; for to poor and not very far-seeing men the loss of

daily bread is an appalling prospect. But invention does not stand

still on that account. Human brains WILL work. Old tools are improved

and new ones invented, superseding existing methods of production,

though the weak and unskilled may occasionally be pushed aside or even

trodden under foot. The consolation which remains is, that while the

few suffer, society as a whole is vastly benefitted by the improved

methods of production which are suggested, invented, and perfected by

the experience of successive generations.

The living race is the inheritor of the industry and skill of all past

times; and the civilization we enjoy is but the sum of the useful

effects of labour during the past centuries. Nihil per saltum. By

slow and often painful steps Nature's secrets have been mastered. Not

an effort has been made but has had its influence. For no human labour

is altogether lost; some remnant of useful effect surviving for the

benefit of the race, if not of the individual. Even attempts

apparently useless have not really been so, but have served in some way

to advance man to higher knowledge, skill, or discipline. "The loss of

a position gained," says Professor Thomson, "is an event unknown in the

history of man's struggle with the forces of inanimate nature." A

single step won gives a firmer foothold for further effort. The man

may die, but the race survives and continues the work,--to use the

poet's simile, mounting on stepping-stones of dead selves to higher

selves.

Philarete Chasles, indeed, holds that it is the Human Race that is your

true inventor: "As if to unite all generations," he says, "and to show

that man can only act efficiently by association with others, it has

been ordained that each inventor shall only interpret the first word of

the problem he sets himself to solve, and that every great idea shall

be the RESUME of the past at the same time that it is the germ of the

future." And rarely does it happen that any discovery or invention of

importance is made by one man alone. The threads of inquiry are taken

up and traced, one labourer succeeding another, each tracing it a

little further, often without apparent result. This goes on sometimes

for centuries, until at length some man, greater perhaps than his

fellows, seeking to fulfil the needs of his time, gathers the various

threads together, treasures up the gain of past successes and failures,

and uses them as the means for some solid achievement, Thus Newton

discovered the law of gravitation, and thus James Watt invented the

steam-engine. So also of the Locomotive, of which Robert Stephenson

said, "It has not been the invention of any one man, but of a race of

mechanical engineers." Or, as Joseph Bramah observed, in the preamble

to his second Lock patent, "Among the number of patents granted there

are comparatively few which can be called original so that it is

difficult to say where the boundary of one ends and where that of

another begins."

The arts are indeed reared but slowly; and it was a wise observation of

Lord Bacon that we are too apt to pass those ladders by which they have

been reared, and reflect the whole merit on the last new performer.

Thus, what is hailed as an original invention is often found to be but

the result of a long succession of trials and experiments gradually

following each other, which ought rather to be considered as a

continuous series of achievements of the human mind than as the

conquest of any single individual. It has sometimes taken centuries of

experience to ascertain the value of a single fact in its various

bearings. Like man himself, experience is feeble and apparently

purposeless in its infancy, but acquires maturity and strength with

age. Experience, however, is not limited to a lifetime, but is the

stored-up wealth and power of our race. Even amidst the death of

successive generations it is constantly advancing and accumulating,

exhibiting at the same time the weakness and the power, the littleness

and the greatness of our common humanity. And not only do we who live

succeed to the actual results of our predecessors' labours,--to their

works of learning and of art, their inventions and discoveries, their

tools and machines, their roads, bridges, canals, and railways,--but to

the inborn aptitudes of blood and brain which they bequeath to us, to

that "educability," so to speak, which has been won for us by the

labours of many generations, and forms our richest natural heritage.

The beginning of most inventions is very remote. The first idea, born

within some unknown brain, passes thence into others, and at last comes

forth complete, after a parturition, it may be, of centuries. One

starts the idea, another developes it, and so on progressively until at

last it is elaborated and worked out in practice; but the first not

less than the last is entitled to his share in the merit of the

invention, were it only possible to measure and apportion it duly.

Sometimes a great original mind strikes upon some new vein of hidden

power, and gives a powerful impulse to the inventive faculties of man,

which lasts through generations. More frequently, however, inventions

are not entirely new, but modifications of contrivances previously

known, though to a few, and not yet brought into practical use.

Glancing back over the history of mechanism, we occasionally see an

invention seemingly full born, when suddenly it drops out of sight, and

we hear no more of it for centuries. It is taken up de novo by some

inventor, stimulated by the needs of his time, and falling again upon

the track, he recovers the old footmarks, follows them up, and

completes the work.

There is also such a thing as inventions being born before their

time--the advanced mind of one generation projecting that which cannot

be executed for want of the requisite means; but in due process of

time, when mechanism has got abreast of the original idea, it is at

length carried out; and thus it is that modern inventors are enabled to

effect many objects which their predecessors had tried in vain to

accomplish. As Louis Napoleon has said, "Inventions born before their

time must remain useless until the level of common intellects rises to

comprehend them." For this reason, misfortune is often the lot of the

inventor before his time, though glory and profit may belong to his

successors. Hence the gift of inventing not unfrequently involves a

yoke of sorrow. Many of the greatest inventors have lived neglected

and died unrequited, before their merits could be recognised and

estimated. Even if they succeed, they often raise up hosts of enemies

in the persons whose methods they propose to supersede. Envy, malice,

and detraction meet them in all their forms; they are assailed by

combinations of rich and unscrupulous persons to wrest from them the

profits of their ingenuity; and last and worst of all, the successful

inventor often finds his claims to originality decried, and himself

branded as a copyist and a pirate.

Among the inventions born out of time, and before the world could make

adequate use of them, we can only find space to allude to a few, though

they are so many that one is almost disposed to accept the words of

Chaucer as true, that "There is nothing new but what has once been

old;" or, as another writer puts it, "There is nothing new but what has

before been known and forgotten;" or, in the words of Solomon, "The

thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing

under the sun." One of the most important of these is the use of

Steam, which was well known to the ancients; but though it was used to

grind drugs, to turn a spit, and to excite the wonder and fear of the

credulous, a long time elapsed before it became employed as a useful

motive-power. The inquiries and experiments on the subject extended

through many ages. Friar Bacon, who flourished in the thirteenth

century, seems fully to have anticipated, in the following remarkable

passage, nearly all that steam could accomplish, as well as the

hydraulic engine and the diving-bell, though the flying machine yet

remains to be invented:--

"I will now," says the Friar, "mention some of the wonderful works of

art and nature in which there is nothing of magic, and which magic

could not perform. Instruments may be made by which the largest ships,

with only one man guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity

than if they were full of sailors. Chariots may be constructed that

will move with incredible rapidity, without the help of animals.

Instruments of flying may be formed, in which a man, sitting at his

ease and meditating on any subject, may beat the air with his

artificial wings, after the manner of birds. A small instrument may be

made to raise or depress the greatest weights. An instrument may be

fabricated by which one man may draw a thousand men to him by force and

against their will; as also machines which will enable men to walk at

the bottom of seas or rivers without danger." It is possible that Friar

Bacon derived his knowledge of the powers which he thus described from

the traditions handed down of former inventions which had been

neglected and allowed to fall into oblivion; for before the invention

of printing, which enabled the results of investigation and experience

to be treasured up in books, there was great risk of the inventions of

one age being lost to the succeeding generations. Yet Disraeli the

elder is of opinion that the Romans had invented printing without being

aware of it; or perhaps the senate dreaded the inconveniences attending

its use, and did not care to deprive a large body of scribes of their

employment. They even used stereotypes, or immovable printing-types,

to stamp impressions on their pottery, specimens of which still exist.

In China the art of printing is of great antiquity. Lithography was

well known in Germany, by the very name which it still bears, nearly

three hundred years before Senefelder reinvented it; and specimens of

the ancient art are yet to be seen in the Royal Museum at Munich.[5]

Steam-locomotion by sea and land, had long been dreamt of and

attempted. Blasco de Garay made his experiment in the harbour of

Barcelona as early as 1543; Denis Papin made a similar attempt at

Cassel in 1707; but it was not until Watt had solved the problem of the

steam-engine that the idea of the steam-boat could be developed in

practice, which was done by Miller of Dalswinton in 1788. Sages and

poets have frequently foreshadowed inventions of great social moment.

Thus Dr. Darwin's anticipation of the locomotive, in his Botanic

Garden, published in 1791, before any locomotive had been invented,

might almost be regarded as prophetic:

Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar

Drag the slow barge, and drive the rapid car.

Denis Papin first threw out the idea of atmospheric locomotion; and

Gauthey, another Frenchman, in 1782 projected a method of conveying

parcels and merchandise by subterraneous tubes,[6] after the method

recently patented and brought into operation by the London Pneumatic

Despatch Company. The balloon was an ancient Italian invention,

revived by Mongolfier long after the original had been forgotten. Even

the reaping machine is an old invention revived. Thus Barnabe Googe,

the translator of a book from the German entitled 'The whole Arte and

Trade of Husbandrie,' published in 1577, in the reign of Elizabeth,

speaks of the reaping-machine as a worn-out invention--a thing "which

was woont to be used in France. The device was a lowe kinde of carre

with a couple of wheeles, and the frunt armed with sharpe syckles,

whiche, forced by the beaste through the corne, did cut down al before

it. This tricke," says Googe, "might be used in levell and champion

countreys; but with us it wolde make but ill-favoured woorke." [7] The

Thames Tunnel was thought an entirely new manifestation of engineering

genius; but the tunnel under the Euphrates at ancient Babylon, and that

under the wide mouth of the harbour at Marseilles (a much more

difficult work), show that the ancients were beforehand with us in the

art of tunnelling. Macadamized roads are as old as the Roman empire;

and suspension bridges, though comparatively new in Europe, have been

known in China for centuries.

There is every reason to believe--indeed it seems clear that the Romans

knew of gunpowder, though they only used it for purposes of fireworks;

while the secret of the destructive Greek fire has been lost

altogether. When gunpowder came to be used for purposes of war,

invention busied itself upon instruments of destruction. When recently

examining the Museum of the Arsenal at Venice, we were surprised to

find numerous weapons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries

embodying the most recent English improvements in arms, such as

revolving pistols, rifled muskets, and breech-loading cannon. The

latter, embodying Sir William Armstrong's modern idea, though in a rude

form, had been fished up from the bottom of the Adriatic, where the

ship armed with them had been sunk hundreds of years ago. Even

Perkins's steam-gun was an old invention revived by Leonardo da Vinci

and by him attributed to Archimedes.[8] The Congreve rocket is said to

have an Eastern origin, Sir William Congreve having observed its

destructive effects when employed by the forces under Tippoo Saib in

the Mahratta war, on which he adopted and improved the missile, and

brought out the invention as his own.

Coal-gas was regularly used by the Chinese for lighting purposes long

before it was known amongst us. Hydropathy was generally practised by

the Romans, who established baths wherever they went. Even chloroform

is no new thing. The use of ether as an anaesthetic was known to

Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century; and in his

works he gives a recipe for its preparation. In 1681 Denis Papin

published his Traite des Operations sans Douleur, showing that he had

discovered methods of deadening pain. But the use of anaesthetics is

much older than Albertus Magnus or Papin; for the ancients had their

nepenthe and mandragora; the Chinese their mayo, and the Egyptians

their hachisch (both preparations of Cannabis Indica), the effects of

which in a great measure resemble those of chloroform. What is perhaps

still more surprising is the circumstance that one of the most elegant

of recent inventions, that of sun-painting by the daguerreotype, was in

the fifteenth century known to Leonardo da Vinci,[9] whose skill as an

architect and engraver, and whose accomplishments as a chemist and

natural philosopher, have been almost entirely overshadowed by his

genius as a painter.[10] The idea, thus early born, lay in oblivion

until 1760, when the daguerreotype was again clearly indicated in a

book published in Paris, written by a certain Tiphanie de la Roche,

under the anagrammatic title of Giphantie. Still later, at the

beginning of the present century, we find Thomas Wedgwood, Sir Humphry

Davy, and James Watt, making experiments on the action of light upon

nitrate of silver; and only within the last few months a silvered

copper-plate has been found amongst the old household lumber of Matthew

Boulton (Watt's partner), having on it a representation of the old

premises at Soho, apparently taken by some such process.[11]

In like manner the invention of the electric telegraph, supposed to be

exclusively modern, was clearly indicated by Schwenter in his

Delasements Physico-Mathematiques, published in 1636; and he there

pointed out how two individuals could communicate with each other by

means of the magnetic needle. A century later, in 1746, Le Monnier

exhibited a series of experiments in the Royal Gardens at Paris,

showing how electricity could be transmitted through iron wire 950

fathoms in length; and in 1753 we find one Charles Marshall publishing

a remarkable description of the electric telegraph in the Scots

Magazine, under the title of 'An expeditions Method of conveying

Intelligence.' Again, in 1760, we find George Louis Lesage, professor

of mathematics at Geneva, promulgating his invention of an electric

telegraph, which he eventually completed and set to work in 1774. This

instrument was composed of twenty-four metallic wires, separate from

each other and enclosed in a non-conducting substance. Each wire ended

in a stalk mounted with a little ball of elder-wood suspended by a silk

thread. When a stream of electricity, no matter how slight., was sent

through the wire, the elder-ball at the opposite end was repelled, such

movement designating some letter of the alphabet. A few years later we

find Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, describing a similar

machine invented by a M. Lomond of Paris, the action of which he also

describes.[12] In these and similar cases, though the idea was born

and the model of the invention was actually made, it still waited the

advent of the scientific mechanical inventor who should bring it to

perfection, and embody it in a practical working form.

Some of the most valuable inventions have descended to us without the

names of their authors having been preserved. We are the inheritors of

an immense legacy of the results of labour and ingenuity, but we know

not the names of our benefactors. Who invented the watch as a measurer

of time? Who invented the fast and loose pulley? Who invented the

eccentric? Who, asks a mechanical inquirer,[13] "invented the method of

cutting screws with stocks and dies? Whoever he might be, he was

certainly a great benefactor of his species. Yet (adds the writer) his

name is not known, though the invention has been so recent." This is

not, however, the case with most modern inventions, the greater number

of which are more or less disputed. Who was entitled to the merit of

inventing printing has never yet been determined. Weber and Senefelder

both laid claim to the invention of lithography, though it was merely

an old German art revived. Even the invention of the penny-postage

system by Sir Rowland Hill is disputed; Dr. Gray of the British Museum

claiming to be its inventor, and a French writer alleging it to be an

old French invention.[14] The invention of the steamboat has been

claimed on behalf of Blasco de Garay, a Spaniard, Papin, a Frenchman,

Jonathan Hulls, an Englishman, and Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, a

Scotchman. The invention of the spinning machine has been variously

attributed to Paul, Wyatt, Hargreaves, Higley, and Arkwright. The

invention of the balance-spring was claimed by Huyghens, a Dutchman,

Hautefeuille, a Frenchman, and Hooke, an Englishman. There is scarcely

a point of detail in the locomotive but is the subject of dispute.

Thus the invention of the blast-pipe is claimed for Trevithick, George

Stephenson, Goldsworthy Gurney, and Timothy Hackworth; that of the

tubular boiler by Seguin, Stevens, Booth, and W. H. James; that of

the link-motion by John Gray, Hugh Williams, and Robert Stephenson.

Indeed many inventions appear to be coincident. A number of minds are

working at the same time in the same track, with the object of

supplying some want generally felt; and, guided by the same experience,

they not unfrequently arrive at like results. It has sometimes

happened that the inventors have been separated by great distances, so

that piracy on the part of either was impossible. Thus Hadley and

Godfrey almost simultaneously invented the quadrant, the one in London,

the other in Philadelphia; and the process of electrotyping was

invented at the same time by Mr. Spencer, a working chemist at

Liverpool, and by Professor Jacobi at St. Petersburg. The safety-lamp

was a coincident invention, made about the same time by Sir Humphry

Davy and George Stephenson; and perhaps a still more remarkable

instance of a coincident discovery was that of the planet Neptune by

Leverrier at Paris, and by Adams at Cambridge.

It is always difficult to apportion the due share of merit which

belongs to mechanical inventors, who are accustomed to work upon each

other's hints and suggestions, as well as by their own experience.

Some idea of this difficulty may be formed from the fact that, in the

course of our investigations as to the origin of the planing

machine--one of the most useful of modern tools--we have found that it

has been claimed on behalf of six inventors--Fox of Derby, Roberts of

Manchester, Matthew Murray of Leeds, Spring of Aberdeen, Clement and

George Rennie of London; and there may be other claimants of whom we

have not yet heard. But most mechanical inventions are of a very

composite character, and are led up to by the labour and the study of a

long succession of workers. Thus Savary and Newcomen led up to Watt;

Cugnot, Murdock, and Trevithick to the Stephensons; and Maudslay to

Clement, Roberts, Nasmyth, Whitworth, and many more mechanical

inventors. There is scarcely a process in the arts but has in like

manner engaged mind after mind in bringing it to perfection. "There is

nothing," says Mr. Hawkshaw, "really worth having that man has

obtained, that has not been the result of a combined and gradual

process of investigation. A gifted individual comes across some old

footmark, stumbles on a chain of previous research and inquiry. He

meets, for instance, with a machine, the result of much previous

labour; he modifies it, pulls it to pieces, constructs and reconstructs

it, and by further trial and experiment he arrives at the long

sought-for result." [15]

But the making of the invention is not the sole difficulty. It is one

thing to invent, said Sir Marc Brunel, and another thing to make the

invention work. Thus when Watt, after long labour and study, had

brought his invention to completion, he encountered an obstacle which

has stood in the way of other inventors, and for a time prevented the

introduction of their improvements, if not led to their being laid

aside and abandoned. This was the circumstance that the machine

projected was so much in advance of the mechanical capability of the

age that it was with the greatest difficulty it could be executed.

When labouring upon his invention at Glasgow, Watt was baffled and

thrown into despair by the clumsiness and incompetency of his workmen.

Writing to Dr. Roebuck on one occasion, he said, "You ask what is the

principal hindrance in erecting engines? It is always the smith-work."

His first cylinder was made by a whitesmith, of hammered iron soldered

together, but having used quicksilver to keep the cylinder air-tight,

it dropped through the inequalities into the interior, and "played the

devil with the solder." Yet, inefficient though the whitesmith was,

Watt could ill spare him, and we find him writing to Dr. Roebuck almost

in despair, saying, "My old white-iron man is dead!" feeling his loss

to be almost irreparable. His next cylinder was cast and bored at

Carron, but it was so untrue that it proved next to useless. The

piston could not be kept steam tight, notwithstanding the various

expedients which were adopted of stuffing it with paper, cork, putty,

pasteboard, and old hat. Even after Watt had removed to Birmingham,

and he had the assistance of Boulton's best workmen, Smeaton expressed

the opinion, when he saw the engine at work, that notwithstanding the

excellence of the invention, it could never be brought into general use

because of the difficulty of getting its various parts manufactured

with sufficient precision. For a long time we find Watt, in his

letters, complaining to his partner of the failure of his engines

through "villainous bad workmanship." Sometimes the cylinders, when

cast, were found to be more than an eighth of an inch wider at one end

than the other; and under such circumstances it was impossible the

engine could act with precision. Yet better work could not be had.

First-rate workmen in machinery did not as yet exist; they were only in

process of education. Nearly everything had to be done by hand. The

tools used were of a very imperfect kind. A few ill-constructed

lathes, with some drills and boring-machines of a rude sort,

constituted the principal furniture of the workshop. Years after, when

Brunel invented his block-machines, considerable time elapsed before he

could find competent mechanics to construct them, and even after they

had been constructed he had equal difficulty in finding competent hands

to work them.[16]

Watt endeavoured to remedy the defect by keeping certain sets of

workmen to special classes of work, allowing them to do nothing else.

Fathers were induced to bring up their sons at the same bench with

themselves, and initiate them in the dexterity which they had acquired

by experience; and at Soho it was not unusual for the same precise line

of work to be followed by members of the same family for three

generations. In this way as great a degree of accuracy of a mechanical

kind was arrived at was practicable under the circumstances. But

notwithstanding all this care, accuracy of fitting could not be secured

so long as the manufacture of steam-engines was conducted mainly by

hand. There was usually a considerable waste of steam, which the

expedients of chewed paper and greased hat packed outside the piston

were insufficient to remedy; and it was not until the invention of

automatic machine-tools by the mechanical engineers about to be

mentioned, that the manufacture of the steam-engine became a matter of

comparative ease and certainty. Watt was compelled to rest satisfied

with imperfect results, arising from imperfect workmanship. Thus,

writing to Dr. Small respecting a cylinder 18 inches in diameter, he

said, "at the worst place the long diameter exceeded the short by only

three-eighths of an inch." How different from the state of things at

this day, when a cylinder five feet wide will be rejected as a piece of

imperfect workmanship if it be found to vary in any part more than the

80th part of an inch in diameter!

Not fifty years since it was a matter of the utmost difficulty to set

an engine to work, and sometimes of equal difficulty to keep it going.

Though fitted by competent workmen, it often would not go at all. Then

the foreman of the factory at which it was made was sent for, and he

would almost live beside the engine for a month or more; and after

easing her here and screwing her up there, putting in a new part and

altering an old one, packing the piston and tightening the valves, the

machine would at length begot to work.[17] Now the case is altogether

different. The perfection of modern machine-tools is such that the

utmost possible precision is secured, and the mechanical engineer can

calculate on a degree of exactitude that does not admit of a deviation

beyond the thousandth part of an inch. When the powerful oscillating

engines of the 'Warrior' were put on board that ship, the parts,

consisting of some five thousand separate pieces, were brought from the

different workshops of the Messrs. Penn and Sons, where they had been

made by workmen who knew not the places they were to occupy, and fitted

together with such precision that so soon as the steam was raised and

let into the cylinders, the immense machine began as if to breathe and

move like a living creature, stretching its huge arms like a new-born

giant, and then, after practising its strength a little and proving its

soundness in body and limb, it started off with the power of above a

thousand horses to try its strength in breasting the billows of the

North Sea.

Such are among the triumphs of modern mechanical engineering, due in a

great measure to the perfection of the tools by means of which all

works in metal are now fashioned. These tools are themselves among the

most striking results of the mechanical invention of the day. They are

automata of the most perfect kind, rendering the engine and

machine-maker in a great measure independent of inferior workmen. For

the machine tools have no unsteady hand, are not careless nor clumsy,

do not work by rule of thumb, and cannot make mistakes. They will

repeat their operations a thousand times without tiring, or varying one

hair's breadth in their action; and will turn out, without complaining,

any quantity of work, all of like accuracy and finish. Exercising as

they do so remarkable an influence on the development of modern

industry, we now propose, so far as the materials at our disposal will

admit, to give an account of their principal inventors, beginning with

the school of Bramah.

[1] 1 Samuel, ch. xiii. v. 21.

[2] State Papers, Dom. 1621, Vol. 88, No. 112.

[3] Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851, 2nd

Series, 117.

[4] Dr. Kirwan, late President of the Royal Irish Academy, who had

travelled much on the continent of Europe, used to relate, when

speaking of the difficulty of introducing improvements in the arts and

manufactures, and of the prejudices entertained for old practices,

that, in Normandy, the farmers had been so long accustomed to the use

of plough's whose shares were made entirely of WOOD that they could not

be prevailed on to make trial of those with IRON; that they considered

them to be an idle and useless innovation on the long-established

practices of their ancestors; and that they carried these prejudices so

far as to force the government to issue an edict on the subject. And

even to the last they were so obstinate in their attachment to

ploughshares of wood that a tumultuous opposition was made to the

enforcement of the edict, which for a short time threatened a rebellion

in the province.--PARKES, Chemical Essays, 4th Ed. 473.

[5] EDOUARD FOURNIER, Vieux-Neuf, i. 339.

[6] Memoires de l' Academie des Sciences, 6 Feb. 1826.

[7] Farmer's Magazine, 1817, No. ixxi. 291.

[8] Vieux-Neuf, i. 228; Inventa Nova-Antiqua, 742.

[9] Vieux-Neuf, i. 19. See also Inventa Nova-Antiqua, 803.

[10] Mr. Hallam, in his Introduction to the History of Europe,

pronounces the following remarkable eulogium on this extraordinary

genius:--"If any doubt could be harboured, not only as to the right of

Leonardo da Vinci to stand as 'the first name of the fifteenth century,

which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many

discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such

circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very

untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a

height which mere books do not record." "Unpublished MSS. by Leonardo

contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries," says Mr. Hallam,

"within the compass of a few pages, so as to strike us with something

like the awe of preternatural knowledge."

[11] The plate is now to be seen at the Museum of Patents at South

Kensington. In the account which has been published of the above

discovery it is stated that "an old man of ninety (recently dead or

still alive) recollected, or recollects, that Watt and others used to

take portraits of people in a dark (?) room; and there is a letter

extant of Sir William Beechey, begging the Lunar Society to desist from

these experiments, as, were the process to succeed, it would ruin

portrait-painting."

[12] "16th Oct. 1787. In the evening to M. Lomond, a very ingenious

and inventive mechanic, who has made an improvement of the jenny for

spinning cotton. Common machines are said to make too hard a thread

for certain fabrics, but this forms it loose and spongy. In

electricity he has made a remarkable discovery: you write two or three

words on a paper; he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine

inclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer,

a small fine pith ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and

electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the

corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate;

from which it appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As

the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a

correspondence might be carried on at any distance: within and without

a besieged town, for instance; or for a purpose much more worthy, and a

thousand times more harmless, between two lovers prohibited or

prevented from any better connexion. Whatever the use may be, the

invention is beautiful."--Arthur Young's Travels in France in 1787-8-9.

London, 1792, 4to. ed. p. 65.

[13] Mechanic's Magazine, 4th Feb. 1859.

[14] A writer in the Monde says:--"The invention of postage-stamps is

far from being so modern as is generally supposed. A postal regulation

in France of the year 1653, which has recently come to light, gives

notice of the creation of pre-paid tickets to be used for Paris instead

of money payments. These tickets were to be dated and attached to the

letter or wrapped round it, in such a manner that the postman could

remove and retain them on delivering the missive. These franks were to

be sold by the porters of the convents, prisons, colleges, and other

public institutions, at the price of one sou."

[15] Inaugural Address delivered before the Institution of Civil

Engineers, 14th Jan. 1862.

[16] BEAMISH'S Memoir of Sir I. M. Brunel, 79, 80.

[17] There was the same clumsiness in all kinds of mill-work before the

introduction of machine-tools. We have heard of a piece of machinery

of the old school, the wheels of which, when set to work, made such a

clatter that the owner feared the engine would fall to pieces. The

foreman who set it agoing, after working at it until he was almost in

despair, at last gave it up, saving, "I think we had better leave the

cogs to settle their differences with one another: they will grind

themselves right in time!"

CHAPTER XI.

JOSEPH BRAMAH.

"The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial

world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and

decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and

oil."--ISAAC TAYLOR, Ultimate Civilization.

The inventive faculty is so strong in some men that it may be said to

amount to a passion, and cannot be restrained. The saying that the

poet is born, not made, applies with equal force to the inventor, who,

though indebted like the other to culture and improved opportunities,

nevertheless invents and goes on inventing mainly to gratify his own

instinct. The inventor, however, is not a creator like the poet, but

chiefly a finder-out. His power consists in a great measure in quick

perception and accurate observation, and in seeing and foreseeing the

effects of certain mechanical combinations. He must possess the gift

of insight, as well as of manual dexterity, combined with the

indispensable qualities of patience and perseverance,--for though

baffled, as he often is, he must be ready to rise up again unconquered

even in the moment of defeat. This is the stuff of which the greatest

inventors have been made. The subject of the following memoir may not

be entitled to take rank as a first-class inventor, though he was a

most prolific one; but, as the founder of a school from which proceeded

some of the most distinguished mechanics of our time, he is entitled to

a prominent place in this series of memoirs.

Joseph Bramah was born in 1748 at the village of Stainborough, near

Barnsley in Yorkshire, where his father rented a small farm under Lord

Strafford. Joseph was the eldest of five children, and was early

destined to follow the plough. After receiving a small amount of

education at the village school, he was set to work upon the farm.

From an early period he showed signs of constructive skill. When a

mere boy, he occupied his leisure hours in making musical instruments,

and he succeeded in executing some creditable pieces of work with very

imperfect tools. A violin, which he made out of a solid block of wood,

was long preserved as a curiosity. He was so fortunate as to make a

friend of the village blacksmith, whose smithy he was in the practice

of frequenting. The smith was an ingenious workman, and, having taken

a liking for the boy, he made sundry tools for him out of old files and

razor blades; and with these his fiddle and other pieces of work were

mainly executed.

Joseph might have remained a ploughman for life, but for an accident

which happened to his right ankle at the age of 16, which unfitted him

for farm-work. While confined at home disabled he spent his time in

carving and making things in wood; and then it occurred to him that,

though he could not now be a ploughman, he might be a mechanic. When

sufficiently recovered, he was accordingly put apprentice to one

Allott, the village carpenter, under whom he soon became an expert

workman. He could make ploughs, window-frames, or fiddles, with equal

dexterity. He also made violoncellos, and was so fortunate as to sell

one of his making for three guineas, which is still reckoned a good

instrument. He doubtless felt within him the promptings of ambition,

such as every good workman feels, and at all events entertained the

desire of rising in his trade. When his time was out, he accordingly

resolved to seek work in London, whither he made the journey on foot.

He soon found work at a cabinet-maker's, and remained with him for some

time, after which he set up business in a very small way on his own

account. An accident which happened to him in the course of his daily

work, again proved his helper, by affording him a degree of leisure

which he at once proceeded to turn to some useful account. Part of his

business consisted in putting up water-closets, after a method invented

or improved by a Mr. Allen; but the article was still very imperfect;

and Bramah had long resolved that if he could only secure some leisure

for the purpose, he would contrive something that should supersede it

altogether. A severe fall which occurred to him in the course of his

business, and laid him up, though very much against his will, now

afforded him the leisure which he desired, and he proceeded to make his

proposed invention. He took out a patent for it in 1778, describing

himself in the specification as "of Cross Court, Carnaby Market [Golden

Square], Middlesex, Cabinet Maker." He afterwards removed to a shop in

Denmark Street, St. Giles's, and while there he made a further

improvement in his invention by the addition of a water cock, which he

patented in 1783. The merits of the machine were generally recognised,

and before long it came into extensive use, continuing to be employed,

with but few alterations, until the present day. His circumstances

improving with the increased use of his invention, Bramah proceeded to

undertake the manufacture of the pumps, pipes, &c., required for its

construction; and, remembering his friend the Yorkshire blacksmith, who

had made his first tools for him out of the old files and razor-blades,

he sent for him to London to take charge of his blacksmith's

department, in which he proved a most useful assistant. As usual, the

patent was attacked by pirates so soon as it became productive, and

Bramah was under the necessity, on more than one occasion, of defending

his property in the invention, in which he was completely successful.

We next find Bramah turning his attention to the invention of a lock

that should surpass all others then known. The locks then in use were

of a very imperfect character, easily picked by dexterous thieves,

against whom they afforded little protection. Yet locks are a very

ancient invention, though, as in many other cases, the art of making

them seems in a great measure to have become lost, and accordingly had

to be found out anew. Thus the tumbler lock--which consists in the use

of moveable impediments acted on by the proper key only, as

contradistinguished from the ordinary ward locks, where the impediments

are fixed--appears to have been well known to the ancient Egyptians,

the representation of such a lock being found sculptured among the

bas-reliefs which decorate the great temple at Karnak. This kind of

lock was revived, or at least greatly improved, by a Mr. Barron in

1774, and it was shortly after this time that Bramah directed his

attention to the subject. After much study and many experiments, he

contrived a lock more simple, more serviceable, as well as more secure,

than Barron's, as is proved by the fact that it has stood the test of

nearly eighty years' experience,[1] and still holds its ground. For a

long time, indeed, Bramah's lock was regarded as absolutely inviolable,

and it remained unpicked for sixty-seven years until Hobbs the American

mastered it in 1851. A notice had long been exhibited in Bramah's

shop-window in Piccadilly, offering 200L. to any one who should succeed

in picking the patent lock. Many tried, and all failed, until Hobbs

succeeded, after sixteen days' manipulation of it with various

elaborate instruments. But the difficulty with which the lock was

picked showed that, for all ordinary purposes, it might be pronounced

impregnable.

The new locks were machines of the most delicate kind, the action of

which depended in a great measure upon the precision with which the

springs, sliders, levers, barrels, and other parts were finished. The

merits of the invention being generally admitted, there was a

considerable demand for the locks, and the necessity thus arose for

inventing a series of original machine-tools to enable them to be

manufactured in sufficient quantities to meet the demand. It is

probable, indeed, that, but for the contrivance of such tools, the lock

could never have come in to general use, as the skill of hand-workmen,

no matter how experienced, could not have been relied upon for turning

out the article with that degree of accuracy and finish in all the

parts which was indispensable for its proper action. In conducting the

manufacture throughout, Bramah was greatly assisted by Henry Maudslay,

his foreman, to whom he was in no small degree indebted for the

contrivance of those tool-machines which enabled him to carry on the

business of lock-making with advantage and profit.

Bramah's indefatigable spirit of invention was only stimulated to fresh

efforts by the success of his lock; and in the course of a few years we

find him entering upon a more important and original line of action

than he had yet ventured on. His patent of 1785 shows the direction of

his studies. Watt had invented his steam-engine, which was coming into

general use; and the creation of motive-power in various other forms

became a favourite subject of inquiry with inventors. Bramah's first

invention with this object was his Hydrostatic Machine, founded on the

doctrine of the equilibrium of pressure in fluids, as exhibited in the

well known 'hydrostatic paradox.' In his patent of 1785, in which he no

longer describes himself as Cabinet maker, but 'Engine maker' of

Piccadilly, he indicated many inventions, though none of them came into

practical use,--such as a Hydrostatical Machine and Boiler, and the

application of the power produced by them to the drawing of carriages,

and the propelling of ships by a paddle-wheel fixed in the stern of the

vessel, of which drawings are annexed to the specification; but it was

not until 1795 that he patented his Hydrostatic or Hydraulic Press.

Though the principle on which the Hydraulic Press is founded had long

been known, and formed the subject of much curious speculation, it

remained unproductive of results until a comparatively recent period,

when the idea occurred of applying it to mechanical purposes. A

machine of the kind was indeed proposed by Pascal, the eminent

philosopher, in 1664, but more than a century elapsed before the

difficulties in the way of its construction were satisfactorily

overcome. Bramah's machine consists of a large and massive cylinder,

in which there works an accurately-fitted solid piston or plunger. A

forcing-pump of very small bore communicates with the bottom of the

cylinder, and by the action of the pump-handle or lever, exceeding

small quantities of water are forced in succession beneath the piston

in the large cylinder, thus gradually raising it up, and compressing

bodies whose bulk or volume it is intended to reduce. Hence it is most

commonly used as a packing-press, being superior to every other

contrivance of the kind that has yet been invented; and though

exercising a prodigious force, it is so easily managed that a boy can

work it. The machine has been employed on many extraordinary occasions

in preference to other methods of applying power. Thus Robert

Stephenson used it to hoist the gigantic tubes of the Britannia Bridge

into their bed,[2] and Brunel to launch the Great Eastern steamship

from her cradles. It has also been used to cut bars of iron, to draw

the piles driven in forming coffer dams, and to wrench up trees by the

roots, all of which feats it accomplishes with comparative ease.

The principal difficulty experienced in constructing the hydraulic

press before the time of Bramah arose from the tremendous pressure

exercised by the pump, which forced the water through between the solid

piston and the side of the cylinder in which it worked in such

quantities as to render the press useless for practical purposes.

Bramah himself was at first completely baffled by this difficulty. It

will be observed that the problem was to secure a joint sufficiently

free to let the piston slide up through it, and at the same time so

water-tight as to withstand the internal force of the pump. These two

conditions seemed so conflicting that Bramah was almost at his wit's

end, and for a time despaired of being able to bring the machine to a

state of practical efficiency. None but those who have occupied

themselves in the laborious and often profitless task of helping the

world to new and useful machines can have any idea of the tantalizing

anxiety which arises from the apparently petty stumbling-blocks which

for awhile impede the realization of a great idea in mechanical

invention. Such was the case with the water-tight arrangement in the

hydraulic press. In his early experiments, Bramah tried the expedient

of the ordinary stuffing-box for the purpose of securing the required

water tightness' That is, a coil of hemp on leather washers was placed

in a recess, so as to fit tightly round the moving ram or piston, and

it was further held in its place by means of a compressing collar

forced hard down by strong screws. The defect of this arrangement was,

that, even supposing the packing could be made sufficiently tight to

resist the passage of the water urged by the tremendous pressure from

beneath, such was the grip which the compressed material took of the

ram of the press, that it could not be got to return down after the

water pressure had been removed.

In this dilemma, Bramah's ever-ready workman, Henry Maudslay, came to

his rescue. The happy idea occurred to him of employing the pressure

of the water itself to give the requisite water-tightness to the

collar. It was a flash of common-sense genius--beautiful through its

very simplicity. The result was Maudslay's self-tightening collar, the

action of which a few words of description will render easily

intelligible. A collar of sound leather, the convex side upwards and

the concave downwards, was fitted into the recess turned out in the

neck of the press-cylinder, at the place formerly used as a

stuffing-box. Immediately on the high pressure water being turned on,

it forced its way into the leathern concavity and 'flapped out' the

bent edges of the collar; and, in so doing, caused the leather to apply

itself to the surface of the rising ram with a degree of closeness and

tightness so as to seal up the joint the closer exactly in proportion

to the pressure of the water in its tendency to escape. On the other

hand, the moment the pressure was let off and the ram desired to

return, the collar collapsed and the ram slid gently down, perfectly

free and yet perfectly water-tight. Thus, the former tendency of the

water to escape by the side of the piston was by this most simple and

elegant self-adjusting contrivance made instrumental to the perfectly

efficient action of the machine; and from the moment of its invention

the hydraulic press took its place as one of the grandest agents for

exercising power in a concentrated and tranquil form.

Bramah continued his useful labours as an inventor for many years. His

study of the principles of hydraulics, in the course of his invention

of the press, enabled him to introduce many valuable improvements in

pumping-machinery. By varying the form of the piston and cylinder he

was enabled to obtain a rotary motion,[3] which he advantageously

applied to many purposes. Thus he adopted it in the well known

fire-engine, the use of which has almost become universal. Another

popular machine of his is the beer-pump, patented in 1797, by which the

publican is enabled to raise from the casks in the cellar beneath, the

various liquors sold by him over the counter. He also took out several

patents for the improvement of the steam-engine, in which, however,

Watt left little room for other inventors; and hence Bramah seems to

have entertained a grudge against Watt, which broke out fiercely in the

evidence given by him in the case of Boulton and Watt versus Hornblower

and Maberly, tried in December 1796. On that occasion his temper seems

to have got the better of his judgment, and he was cut short by the

judge in the attempt which he then made to submit the contents of the

pamphlet subsequently published by him in the form of a letter to the

judge before whom the case was tried.[4] In that pamphlet he argued

that Watt's specification had no definite meaning; that it was

inconsistent and absurd, and could not possibly be understood; that the

proposal to work steam-engines on the principle of condensation was

entirely fallacious; that Watt's method of packing the piston was

"monstrous stupidity;" that the engines of Newcomen (since entirely

superseded) were infinitely superior, in all respects, to those of

Watt;--conclusions which, we need scarcely say, have been refuted by

the experience of nearly a century.

On the expiry of Boulton and Watt's patent, Bramah introduced several

valuable improvements in the details of the condensing engine, which

had by that time become an established power,--the most important of

which was his "four-way cock," which he so arranged as to revolve

continuously instead of alternately, thus insuring greater precision

with considerably less wear of parts. In the same patent by which he

secured this invention in 1801, he also proposed sundry improvements in

the boilers, as well as modifications in various parts of the engine,

with the object of effecting greater simplicity and directness of

action.

In his patent of 1802, we find Bramah making another great stride in

mechanical invention, in his tools "for producing straight, smooth, and

parallel surfaces on wood and other materials requiring truth, in a

manner much more expeditious and perfect than can be performed by the

use of axes, saws, planes, and other cutting instruments used by hand

in the ordinary way." The specification describes the object of the

invention to be the saving of manual labour, the reduction in the cost

of production, and the superior character of the work executed. The

tools were fixed on frames driven by machinery, some moving in a rotary

direction round an upright shaft, some with the shaft horizontal like

an ordinary wood-turning lathe, while in others the tools were fixed on

frames sliding in stationary grooves. A wood-planing machine[5] was

constructed on the principle of this invention at Woolwich Arsenal,

where it still continues in efficient use. The axis of the principal

shaft was supported on a piston in a vessel of oil, which considerably

diminished the friction, and it was so contrived as to be accurately

regulated by means of a small forcing-pump. Although the machinery

described in the patent was first applied to working on wood, it was

equally applicable to working on metals; and in his own shops at

Pimlico Bramah employed a machine with revolving cutters to plane

metallic surfaces for his patent locks and other articles. He also

introduced a method of turning spherical surfaces, either convex or

concave, by a tool moveable on an axis perpendicular to that of the

lathe; and of cutting out concentric shells by fixing in a similar

manner a curved tool of nearly the same form as that employed by common

turners for making bowls. "In fact," says Mr. Mallet, "Bramah not only

anticipated, but carried out upon a tolerably large scale in his own

works--for the construction of the patent hydraulic press, the

water-closet, and his locks--a surprisingly large proportion of our

modern tools." [6] His remarkable predilection in favour of the use of

hydraulic arrangements is displayed in his specification of the

surface-planing machinery, which includes a method of running pivots

entirely on a fluid, and raising and depressing them at pleasure by

means of a small forcing-pump and stop-cock,--though we are not aware

that any practical use has ever been made of this part of the invention.

Bramah's inventive genius displayed itself alike in small things as in

great--in a tap wherewith to draw a glass of beer, and in a hydraulic

machine capable of tearing up a tree by the roots. His powers of

contrivance seemed inexhaustible, and were exercised on the most

various subjects. When any difficulty occurred which mechanical

ingenuity was calculated to remove, recourse was usually had to Bramah,

and he was rarely found at a loss for a contrivance to overcome it.

Thus, when applied to by the Bank of England in 1806, to construct a

machine for more accurately and expeditiously printing the numbers and

date lines on Bank notes, he at once proceeded to invent the requisite

model, which he completed in the course of a month. He subsequently

brought it to great perfection the figures in numerical succession

being changed by the action of the machine itself,--and it still

continues in regular use. Its employment in the Bank of England alone

saved the labour of a hundred clerks; but its chief value consisted in

its greater accuracy, the perfect legibility of the figures printed by

it, and the greatly improved check which it afforded.

We next find him occupying himself with inventions connected with the

manufacture of pens and paper. His little pen-making machine for

readily making quill pens long continued in use, until driven out by

the invention of the steel pen; but his patent for making paper by

machinery, though ingenious, like everything he did, does not seem to

have been adopted, the inventions of Fourdrinier and Donkin in this

direction having shortly superseded all others. Among his other minor

inventions may be mentioned his improved method of constructing and

sledging carriage-wheels, and his improved method of laying

water-pipes. In his specification of the last-mentioned invention, he

included the application of water-power to the driving of machinery of

every description, and for hoisting and lowering goods in docks and

warehouses,--since carried out in practice, though in a different

manner, by Sir William Armstrong.[7] In this, as in many other

matters, Bramah shot ahead of the mechanical necessities of his time;

and hence many of his patents (of which he held at one time more than

twenty) proved altogether profitless. His last patent, taken out in

1814, was for the application of Roman cement to timber for the purpose

of preventing dry rot.

Besides his various mechanical pursuits, Bramah also followed to a

certain extent the profession of a civil engineer, though his more

urgent engagements rendered it necessary for him to refuse many

advantageous offers of employment in this line. He was, however, led

to carry out the new water-works at Norwich, between the years 1790 and

1793, in consequence of his having been called upon to give evidence in

a dispute between the corporation of that city and the lessees, in the

course of which he propounded plans which, it was alleged, could not be

carried out. To prove that they could be carried out, and that his

evidence was correct, he undertook the new works, and executed them

with complete success; besides demonstrating in a spirited publication

elicited by the controversy, the insufficiency and incongruity of the

plans which had been submitted by the rival engineer.

For some time prior to his death Bramah had been employed in the

erection of several large machines in his works at Pimlico for sawing

stone and timber, to which he applied his hydraulic power with great

success. New methods of building bridges and canal-locks, with a

variety of other matters, were in an embryo state in his mind, but he

did not live to complete them. He was occupied in superintending the

action of his hydrostatic press at Holt Forest, in Hants--where upwards

of 300 trees of the largest dimensions were in a very short time torn

up by the roots,--when he caught a severe cold, which settled upon his

lungs, and his life was suddenly brought to a close on the 9th of

December, 1814, in his 66th year.

His friend, Dr. Cullen Brown,[8] has said of him, that Bramah was a man

of excellent moral character, temperate in his habits, of a pious turn

of mind,[9] and so cheerful in temperament, that he was the life of

every company into which he entered. To much facility of expression he

added the most perfect independence of opinion; he was a benevolent and

affectionate man; neat and methodical in his habits, and knew well how

to temper liberality with economy. Greatly to his honour, he often

kept his workmen employed, solely for their sake, when stagnation of

trade prevented him disposing of the products of their labour. As a

manufacturer he was distinguished for his promptitude and probity, and

he was celebrated for the exquisite finish which he gave to all his

productions. In this excellence of workmanship, which he was the first

to introduce, he continued while he lived to be unrivalled.

Bramah was deservedly honoured and admired as the first mechanical

genius of his time, and as the founder of the art of tool-making in its

highest branches. From his shops at Pimlico came Henry Maudslay,

Joseph Clement, and many more first-class mechanics, who carried the

mechanical arts to still higher perfection, and gave an impulse to

mechanical engineering, the effects of which are still felt in every

branch of industry.

The parish to which Bramah belonged was naturally proud of the

distinction he had achieved in the world, and commemorated his life and

career by a marble tablet erected by subscription to his memory, in the

parish church of Silkstone. In the churchyard are found the tombstones

of Joseph's father, brother, and other members of the family; and we

are informed that their descendants still occupy the farm at

Stainborough on which the great mechanician was born.

[1] The lock invented by Bramah was patented in 1784. Mr. Bramah

himself fully set forth the specific merits of the invention in his

Dissertation on the Construction of Locks. In a second patent, taken

out by him in 1798, he amended his first with the object of preventing

the counterfeiting of keys, and suspending the office of the lock until

the key was again in the possession of the owner. This he effected by

enabling the owner so to alter the sliders as to render the lock

inaccessible to such key if applied by any other person but himself, or

until the sliders had been rearranged so as to admit of its proper

action. We may mention in passing that the security of Bramah's locks

depends on the doctrine of combinations, or multiplication of numbers

into each other, which is known to increase in the most rapid

proportion. Thus, a lock of five slides admits of 3,000 variations,

while one of eight will have no less than 1,935,360 changes; in other

words, that number of attempts at making a key, or at picking it, may

be made before it can be opened.

[2] The weight raised by a single press at the Britannia Bridge was

1144 tons.

[3] Dr. Thomas Young, in his article on Bramah in the Encyclopaedia

Britannica, describes the "rotative principle" as consisting in making

the part which acts immediately on the water in the form of a slider,

"sweeping round a cylindrical cavity, and kept in its place by means of

an eccentric groove; a contrivance which was probably Bramah's own

invention, but which had been before described, in a form nearly

similar, by Ramelli, Canalleri, Amontons, Prince Rupert, and Dr. Hooke.

[4] A Letter to the Right Hon. Sir James Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of

the Common Pleas, on the subject of the cause Boulton and Watt v.

Hornblower and Maberly, for Infringement on Mr. Watt's Patent for an

Improvement of the Steam Engine. By Joseph Bramah, Engineer. London,

1797.

[5] Sir Samuel Bentham and Marc Isambard Brunel subsequently

distinguished themselves by the invention of wood-working machinery,

full accounts of which will be found in the Memoirs of the former by

Lady Bentham, and in the Life of the latter by Mr. Beamish.

[6] "Record of the International Exhibition, 1862." Practical

Mechanic's Journal, 293.

[7] In this, as in other methods of employing power, the moderns had

been anticipated by the ancients; and though hydraulic machinery is a

comparatively recent invention in England, it had long been in use

abroad. Thus we find in Dr. Bright's Travels in Lower Hungary a full

description of the powerful hydraulic machinery invented by M. Holl,

Chief Engineer of the Imperial Mines, which had been in use since the

year 1749, in pumping water from a depth of 1800 feet, from the silver

and gold mines of Schemnitz and Kremnitz. A head of water was

collected by forming a reservoir along the mountain side, from which it

was conducted through water-tight cast-iron pipes erected

perpendicularly in the mine-shaft. About forty-five fathoms down, the

water descending through the pipe was forced by the weight of the

column above it into the bottom of a perpendicular cylinder, in which

it raised a water-tight piston. When forced up to a given point a

self-acting stop-cock shut off the pressure of the descending column,

while a self-acting valve enabled the water contained in the cylinder

to be discharged, on which the piston again descended, and the process

was repeated like the successive strokes of a steam-engine. Pump-rods

were attached to this hydraulic apparatus, which were carried to the

bottom of the shaft, and each worked a pump at different levels,

raising the water stage by stage to the level of the main adit. The

pumps of these three several stages each raised 1790 cubic feet of

water from a depth of 600 feet in the hour. The regular working of the

machinery was aided by the employment of a balance-beam connected by a

chain with the head of the large piston and pump-rods; and the whole of

these powerful machines by means of three of which as much as 789,840

gallons of water were pumped out of the mines every 24 hours--were set

in operation and regulated merely by the turning of a stopcock. It

will be observed that the arrangement thus briefly described was

equally applicable to the working of machinery of all kinds, cranes,

&c., as well as pumps; and it will be noted that, notwithstanding the

ingenuity of Bramah, Armstrong, and other eminent English mechanics,

the Austrian engineer Holl was thus decidedly beforehand with them in

the practical application of the principles of hydrostatics.

[8] Dr. Brown published a brief memoir of his friend in the New Monthly

Magazine for April, 1815, which has been the foundation of all the

notices of Bramah's life that have heretofore appeared.

[9] Notwithstanding his well-known religious character, Bramah seems to

have fallen under the grievous displeasure of William Huntington, S.S.

(Sinner Saved), described by Macaulay in his youth as "a worthless ugly

lad of the name of Hunter," and in his manhood as "that remarkable

impostor" (Essays, 1 vol. ed. 529). It seems that Huntington sought

the professional services of Bramah when re-edifying his chapel in

1793; and at the conclusion of the work, the engineer generously sent

the preacher a cheque for 8L. towards defraying the necessary expenses.

Whether the sum was less than Huntington expected, or from whatever

cause, the S.S. contemptuously flung back the gift, as proceeding from

an Arian whose religion was "unsavoury," at the same time hurling at

the giver a number of texts conveying epithets of an offensive

character. Bramah replied to the farrago of nonsense, which he

characterised as "unmannerly, absurd, and illiterate that it must have

been composed when the writer was intoxicated, mad, or under the

influence of Lucifer," and he threatened that unless Huntington

apologised for his gratuitous insults, he (Bramah) would assuredly

expose him. The mechanician nevertheless proceeded gravely to explain

and defend his "profession of faith," which was altogether unnecessary.

On this Huntington returned to the charge, and directed against the

mechanic a fresh volley of Scripture texts and phraseology, not without

humour, if profanity be allowable in controversy, as where he says,

"Poor man! he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a sad figure with the

keys of the Kingdom of Heaven!" "What Mr. Bramah is," says S.S., "In

respect to his character or conduct in life, as a man, a tradesman, a

neighbour, a gentleman, a husband, friend, master, or subject, I know

not. In all these characters he may shine as a comet for aught I know;

but he appears to me to be as far from any resemblance to a poor

penitent or broken-hearted sinner as Jannes, Jambres, or Alexander the

coppersmith!" Bramah rejoined by threatening to publish his

assailant's letters, but Huntington anticipated him in A Feeble Dispute

with a Wise and Learned Man, 8vo. London, 1793, in which, whether

justly or not, Huntington makes Bramah appear to murder the king's

English in the most barbarous manner.

CHAPTER XII.

HENRY MAUDSLAY.

"The successful construction of all machinery depends on the perfection

of the tools employed; and whoever is a master in the arts of

tool-making possesses the key to the construction of all machines.....

The contrivance and construction of tools must therefore ever stand at

the head of the industrial arts."--C. BABBAGE, Exposition of 1851.

Henry Maudslay was born at Woolwich towards the end of last century, in

a house standing in the court at the back of the Salutation Inn, the

entrance to which is nearly opposite the Arsenal gates. His father was

a native of Lancashire, descended from an old family of the same name,

the head of which resided at Mawdsley Hall near Ormskirk at the

beginning of the seventeenth century. The family were afterwards

scattered, and several of its members became workmen. William

Maudslay, the father of Henry, belonged to the neighbourhood of Bolton,

where he was brought up to the trade of a joiner. His principal

employment, while working at his trade in Lancashire, consisted in

making the wood framing of cotton machinery, in the construction of

which cast-iron had not yet been introduced. Having got into some

trouble in his neighbourhood, through some alleged LIAISON, William

enlisted in the Royal Artillery, and the corps to which he belonged was

shortly after sent out to the West Indies. He was several times

engaged in battle, and in his last action he was hit by a musket-bullet

in the throat. The soldier's stock which he wore had a piece cut out

of it by the ball, the direction of which was diverted, and though

severely wounded, his life was saved. He brought home the stock and

preserved it as a relic, afterwards leaving it to his son. Long after,

the son would point to the stock, hung up against his wall, and say

"But for that bit of leather there would have been no Henry Maudslay."

The wounded artilleryman was invalided and sent home to Woolwich, the

headquarters of his corps, where he was shortly after discharged.

Being a handy workman, he sought and obtained employment at the

Arsenal. He was afterwards appointed a storekeeper in the Dockyard.

It was during the former stage of William Maudslay's employment at

Woolwich, that the subject of this memoir was born in the house in the

court above mentioned, on the 22nd of August, 1771.

The boy was early set to work. When twelve years old he was employed

as a "powder-monkey," in making and filling cartridges. After two

years, he was passed on to the carpenter's shop where his father

worked, and there he became acquainted with tools and the art of

working in wood and iron. From the first, the latter seems to have had

by far the greatest charms for him. The blacksmiths' shop was close to

the carpenters', and Harry seized every opportunity that offered of

plying the hammer, the file, and the chisel, in preference to the saw

and the plane. Many a cuff did the foreman of carpenters give him for

absenting himself from his proper shop and stealing off to the smithy.

His propensity was indeed so strong that, at the end of a year, it was

thought better, as he was a handy, clever boy, to yield to his earnest

desire to be placed in the smithy, and he was removed thither

accordingly in his fifteenth year.

His heart being now in his work, he made rapid progress, and soon

became an expert smith and metal worker. He displayed his skill

especially in forging light ironwork; and a favourite job of his was

the making of "Trivets" out of the solid, which only the "dab hands" of

the shop could do, but which he threw off with great rapidity in first

rate style. These "Trivets" were made out of Spanish iron bolts--rare

stuff, which, though exceedingly tough, forged like wax under the

hammer. Even at the close of his life, when he had acquired eminent

distinction as an inventor, and was a large employer of skilled labour,

he looked back with pride to the forging of his early days in Woolwich

Arsenal. He used to describe with much gusto, how the old experienced

hands, with whom he was a great favourite, would crowd about him when

forging his "Trivets," some of which may to this day be in use among

Woolwich housewives for supporting the toast-plate before the bright

fire against tea time. This was, however, entirely contraband work,

done "on the sly," and strictly prohibited by the superintending

officer, who used kindly to signal his approach by blowing his nose in

a peculiar manner, so that all forbidden jobs might be put out of the

way by the time he entered the shop.

We have referred to Maudslay's early dexterity in trivet-making--a

circumstance trifling enough in itself--for the purpose of illustrating

the progress which he had made in a branch of his art of the greatest

importance in tool and machine making. Nothing pleased him more in his

after life than to be set to work upon an unusual piece of forging, and

to overcome, as none could do so cleverly as he, the difficulties which

it presented. The pride of art was as strong in him as it must have

been in the mediaeval smiths, who turned out those beautiful pieces of

workmanship still regarded as the pride of our cathedrals and old

mansions. In Maudslay's case, his dexterity as a smith was eventually

directed to machinery, rather than ornamental work; though, had the

latter been his line of labour, we do not doubt that he would have

reached the highest distinction.

The manual skill which our young blacksmith had acquired was such as to

give him considerable reputation in his craft, and he was spoken of

even in the London shops as one of the most dexterous hands in the

trade. It was this circumstance that shortly after led to his removal

from the smithy in Woolwich Arsenal to a sphere more suitable for the

development of his mechanical ability.

We have already stated in the preceding memoir, that Joseph Bramah took

out the first patent for his lock in 1784, and a second for its

improvement several years later; but notwithstanding the acknowledged

superiority of the new lock over all others, Bramah experienced the

greatest difficulty in getting it manufactured with sufficient

precision, and at such a price as to render it an article of extensive

commerce. This arose from the generally inferior character of the

workmanship of that day, as well as the clumsiness and uncertainty of

the tools then in use. Bramah found that even the best manual

dexterity was not to be trusted, and yet it seemed to be his only

resource; for machine-tools of a superior kind had not yet been

invented. In this dilemma he determined to consult an ingenious old

German artisan, then working with William Moodie, a general blacksmith

in Whitechapel. This German was reckoned one of the most ingenious

workmen in London at the time. Bramah had several long interviews with

him, with the object of endeavouring to solve the difficult problem of

how to secure precise workmanship in lock-making. But they could not

solve it; they saw that without better tools the difficulty was

insuperable; and then Bramah began to fear that his lock would remain a

mere mechanical curiosity, and be prevented from coming into general

use.

He was indeed sorely puzzled what next to do, when one of the hammermen

in Moodie's shop ventured to suggest that there was a young man in the

Woolwich Arsenal smithy, named Maudslay, who was so ingenious in such

matters that "nothing bet him," and he recommended that Mr. Bramah

should have a talk with him upon the subject of his difficulty.

Maudslay was at once sent for to Bramah's workshop, and appeared before

the lock-maker, a tall, strong, comely young fellow, then only eighteen

years old. Bramah was almost ashamed to lay his case before such a

mere youth; but necessity constrained him to try all methods of

accomplishing his object, and Maudslay's suggestions in reply to his

statement of the case were so modest, so sensible, and as the result

proved, so practical, that the master was constrained to admit that the

lad before him had an old head though set on young shoulders. Bramah

decided to adopt the youth's suggestions, made him a present on the

spot, and offered to give him a job if he was willing to come and work

in a town shop. Maudslay gladly accepted the offer, and in due time

appeared before Bramah to enter upon his duties.

As Maudslay had served no regular apprenticeship, and was of a very

youthful appearance, the foreman of the shop had considerable doubts as

to his ability to take rank alongside his experienced hands. But

Maudslay soon set his master's and the foreman's mind at rest.

Pointing to a worn-out vice-bench, he said to Bramah, "Perhaps if I can

make that as good as new by six o'clock to-night, it will satisfy your

foreman that I am entitled to rank as a tradesman and take my place

among your men, even though I have not served a seven years'

apprenticeship." There was so much self-reliant ability in the

proposal, which was moreover so reasonable, that it was at once acceded

to. Off went Maudslay's coat, up went his shirt sleeves, and to work

he set with a will upon the old bench. The vice-jaws were re-steeled

"in no time," filed up, re-cut, all the parts cleaned and made trim,

and set into form again. By six o'clock, the old vice was screwed up

to its place, its jaws were hardened and "let down" to proper temper,

and the old bench was made to look so smart and neat that it threw all

the neighbouring benches into the shade! Bramah and his foreman came

round to see it, while the men of the shop looked admiringly on. It

was examined and pronounced "a first-rate job." This diploma piece of

work secured Maudslay's footing, and next Monday morning he came on as

one of the regular hands.

He soon took rank in the shop as a first-class workman. Loving his

art, he aimed at excellence in it, and succeeded. For it must be

understood that the handicraftsman whose heart is in his calling, feels

as much honest pride in turning out a piece of thoroughly good

workmanship, as the sculptor or the painter does in executing a statue

or a picture. In course of time, the most difficult and delicate jobs

came to be entrusted to Maudslay; and nothing gave him greater pleasure

than to be set to work upon an entirely new piece of machinery. And

thus he rose, naturally and steadily, from hand to head work. For his

manual dexterity was the least of his gifts. He possessed an intuitive

power of mechanical analysis and synthesis. He had a quick eye to

perceive the arrangements requisite to effect given purposes; and

whenever a difficulty arose, his inventive mind set to work to overcome

it.

His fellow-workmen were not slow to recognise his many admirable

qualities, of hand, mind, and heart; and he became not only the

favourite, but the hero of the shop. Perhaps he owed something to his

fine personal appearance. Hence on gala-days, when the men turned out

in procession, "Harry" was usually selected to march at their head and

carry the flag. His conduct as a son, also, was as admirable as his

qualities as a workman. His father dying shortly after Maudslay

entered Bramah's concern, he was accustomed to walk down to Woolwich

every Saturday night, and hand over to his mother, for whom he had the

tenderest regard, a considerable share of his week's wages, and this he

continued to do as long as she lived.

Notwithstanding his youth, he was raised from one post to another,

until he was appointed, by unanimous consent, the head foreman of the

works; and was recognised by all who had occasion to do business there

as "Bramah's right-hand man." He not only won the heart of his master,

but--what proved of far greater importance to him--he also won the

heart of his master's pretty housemaid, Sarah Tindel by name, whom he

married, and she went hand-in-hand with him through life, an admirable

"help meet," in every way worthy of the noble character of the great

mechanic. Maudslay was found especially useful by his master in

devising the tools for making his patent locks; and many were the

beautiful contrivances which he invented for the purpose of ensuring

their more accurate and speedy manufacture, with a minimum degree of

labour, and without the need of any large amount of manual dexterity on

the part of the workman. The lock was so delicate a machine, that the

identity of the several parts of which it was composed was found to be

an absolute necessity. Mere handicraft, however skilled, could not

secure the requisite precision of workmanship; nor could the parts be

turned out in sufficient quantity to meet any large demand. It was

therefore requisite to devise machine-tools which should not blunder,

nor turn out imperfect work;--machines, in short, which should be in a

great measure independent of the want of dexterity of individual

workmen, but which should unerringly labour in their prescribed track,

and do the work set them, even in the minutest details, after the

methods designed by their inventor. In this department Maudslay was

eminently successful, and to his laborious ingenuity, as first

displayed in Bramah's workshops, and afterwards in his own

establishment, we unquestionably owe much of the power and accuracy of

our present self-acting machines.

Bramah himself was not backward in admitting that to Henry Maudslay's

practical skill in contriving the machines for manufacturing his locks

on a large scale, the success of his invention was in a great degree

attributable. In further proof of his manual dexterity, it may be

mentioned that he constructed with his own hands the identical padlock

which so severely tested the powers of Mr. Hobbs in 1851. And when it

is considered that the lock had been made for more than half a century,

and did not embody any of the modern improvements, it will perhaps be

regarded not only as creditable to the principles on which it was

constructed, but to the workmanship of its maker, that it should so

long have withstood the various mechanical dexterity to which it was

exposed.

Besides the invention of improved machine-tools for the manufacture of

locks, Maudslay was of further service to Bramah in applying the

expedient to his famous Hydraulic Press, without which it would

probably have remained an impracticable though a highly ingenious

machine. As in other instances of great inventions, the practical

success of the whole is often found to depend upon the action of some

apparently trifling detail. This was especially the case with the

hydraulic press; to which Maudslay added the essential feature of the

self-tightening collar, above described in the memoir of Bramah. Mr.

James Nasmyth is our authority for ascribing this invention to

Maudslay, who was certainly quite competent to have made it; and it is

a matter of fact that Bramah's specification of the press says nothing

of the hollow collar,[1] on which its efficient action mainly depends.

Mr. Nasmyth says--"Maudslay himself told me, or led me to believe, that

it was he who invented the self-tightening collar for the hydraulic

press, without which it would never have been a serviceable machine.

As the self-tightening collar is to the hydraulic press, so is the

steamblast to the locomotive. It is the one thing needful that has

made it effective in practice. If Maudslay was the inventor of the

collar, that one contrivance ought to immortalize him. He used to tell

me of it with great gusto, and I have no reason to doubt the

correctness of his statement." Whoever really struck out the idea of

the collar, displayed the instinct of the true inventor, who invariably

seeks to accomplish his object by the adoption of the simplest possible

means.

During the time that Maudslay held the important office of manager of

Bramah's works, his highest wages were not more than thirty shillings

a-week. He himself thought that he was worth more to his master--as

indeed he was,--and he felt somewhat mortified that he should have to

make an application for an advance; but the increasing expenses of his

family compelled him in a measure to do so. His application was

refused in such a manner as greatly to hurt his sensitive feelings; and

the result was that he threw up his situation, and determined to begin

working on his own account.

His first start in business was in the year 1797, in a small workshop

and smithy situated in Wells Street, Oxford Street. It was in an awful

state of dirt and dilapidation when he became its tenant. He entered

the place on a Friday, but by the Saturday evening, with the help of

his excellent wife, he had the shop thoroughly cleaned, whitewashed,

and put in readiness for beginning work on the next Monday morning. He

had then the pleasure of hearing the roar of his own forge-fire, and

the cheering ring of the hammer on his own anvil; and great was the

pride he felt in standing for the first time within his own smithy and

executing orders for customers on his own account. His first customer

was an artist, who gave him an order to execute the iron work of a

large easel, embodying some new arrangements; and the work was

punctually done to his employer's satisfaction. Other orders followed,

and he soon became fully employed. His fame as a first-rate workman

was almost as great as that of his former master; and many who had been

accustomed to do business with him at Pimlico followed him to Wells

Street. Long years after, the thought of these early days of

self-dependence and hard work used to set him in a glow, and he would

dilate to his intimate friends up on his early struggles and his first

successes, which were much more highly prized by him than those of his

maturer years.

With a true love of his craft, Maudslay continued to apply himself, as

he had done whilst working as Bramah's foreman, to the best methods of

ensuring accuracy and finish of work, so as in a measure to be

independent of the carelessness or want of dexterity of the workman.

With this object he aimed at the contrivance of improved machine-tools,

which should be as much self-acting and self-regulating as possible;

and it was while pursuing this study that he wrought out the important

mechanical invention with which his name is usually identified--that of

the Slide Rest. It continued to be his special delight, when engaged

in the execution of any piece of work in which he took a personal

interest, to introduce a system of identity of parts, and to adapt for

the purpose some one or other of the mechanical contrivances with which

his fertile brain was always teeming. Thus it was from his desire to

leave nothing to the chance of mere individual dexterity of hand that

he introduced the slide rest in the lathe, and rendered it one of the

most important of machine-tools. The first device of this kind was

contrived by him for Bramah, in whose shops it continued in practical

use long after he had begun business for himself. "I have seen the

slide rest," says Mr. James Nasmyth, "the first that Henry Maudslay

made, in use at Messrs. Bramah's workshops, and in it were all those

arrangements which are to be found in the most modern slide rest of our

own day,[2] all of which are the legitimate offspring of Maudslay's

original rest. If this tool be yet extant, it ought to be preserved

with the greatest care, for it was the beginning of those mechanical

triumphs which give to the days in which we live so much of their

distinguishing character."

A very few words of explanation will serve to illustrate the importance

of Maudslay's invention. Every person is familiar with the uses of the

common turning-lathe. It is a favourite machine with amateur

mechanics, and its employment is indispensable for the execution of all

kinds of rounded work in wood and metal. Perhaps there is no

contrivance by which the skill of the handicraftsman has been more

effectually aided than by this machine. Its origin is lost in the

shades of antiquity. Its most ancient form was probably the potter's

wheel, from which it advanced, by successive improvements, to its

present highly improved form. It was found that, by whatever means a

substance capable of being cut could be made to revolve with a circular

motion round a fixed right line as a centre, a cutting tool applied to

its surface would remove the inequalities so that any part of such

surface should be equidistant from that centre. Such is the

fundamental idea of the ordinary turning-lathe. The ingenuity and

experience of mechanics working such an instrument enabled them to add

many improvements to it; until the skilful artisan at length produced

not merely circular turning of the most beautiful and accurate

description, but exquisite figure-work, and complicated geometrical

designs, depending upon the cycloidal and eccentric movements which

were from time to time added to the machine.

The artisans of the Middle Ages were very skilful in the use of the

lathe, and turned out much beautiful screen and stall work, still to be

seen in our cathedrals, as well as twisted and swash-work for the

balusters of staircases and other ornamental purposes. English

mechanics seem early to have distinguished themselves as improvers of

the lathe; and in Moxon's 'Treatise on Turning,' published in 1680, we

find Mr. Thomas Oldfield, at the sign of the Flower-de-Luce, near the

Savoy in the Strand, named as an excellent maker of oval-engines and

swash-engines, showing that such machines were then in some demand.

The French writer Plumier[3] also mentions an ingenious modification of

the lathe by means of which any kind of reticulated form could be given

to the work; and, from it's being employed to ornament the handles of

knives, it was called by him the "Machine a manche de Couteau

d'Angleterre." But the French artisans were at that time much better

skilled than the English in the use of tools, and it is most probable

that we owe to the Flemish and French Protestant workmen who flocked

into England in such large numbers during the religious persecutions of

the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the improvement, if not the

introduction, of the art of turning, as well as many other arts

hereafter to be referred to. It is certain that at the period to which

we refer numerous treatises were published in France on the art of

turning, some of them of a most elaborate character. Such were the

works of De la Hire,[4] who described how every kind of polygon might

be made by the lathe; De la Condamine,[5] who showed how a lathe could

turn all sorts of irregular figures by means of tracers; and of Grand

Jean, Morin,[6] Plumier, Bergeron, and many other writers.

The work of Plumier is especially elaborate, entering into the

construction of the lathe in its various parts, the making of the tools

and cutters, and the different motions to be given to the machine by

means of wheels, eccentrics, and other expedients, amongst which may be

mentioned one very much resembling the slide rest and planing-machine

combined.[7] From this work it appears that turning had long been a

favourite pursuit in France with amateurs of all ranks, who spared no

expense in the contrivance and perfection of elaborate machinery for

the production of complex figures.[8] There was at that time a great

passion for automata in France, which gave rise to many highly

ingenious devices, such as Camus's miniature carriage (made for Louis

XIV. when a child), Degennes' mechanical peacock, Vancanson's duck, and

Maillardet's conjuror. It had the effect of introducing among the

higher order of artists habits of nice and accurate workmanship in

executing delicate pieces of machinery; and the same combination of

mechanical powers which made the steel spider crawl, the duck quack, or

waved the tiny rod of the magician, contributed in future years to

purposes of higher import,--the wheels and pinions, which in these

automata almost eluded the human senses by their minuteness,

reappearing in modern times in the stupendous mechanism of our

self-acting lathes, spinning-mules, and steam-engines.

"In our own country," says Professor Willis, "the literature of this

subject is so defective that it is very difficult to discover what

progress we were making during the seventeenth and eighteenth

centuries." [9] We believe the fact to be, that the progress made in

England down to the end of last century had been very small indeed, and

that the lathe had experienced little or no improvement until Maudslay

took it in hand. Nothing seems to have been known of the slide rest

until he re-invented it and applied it to the production of machinery

of a far more elaborate character than had ever before been

contemplated as possible. Professor Willis says that Bramah's, in

other words Maudslay's, slide rest of 1794 is so different from that

described in the French 'Encyclopedie in 1772, that the two could not

have had a common origin. We are therefore led to the conclusion that

Maudslay's invention was entirely independent of all that had gone

before, and that he contrived it for the special purpose of overcoming

the difficulties which he himself experienced in turning out duplicate

parts in large numbers. At all events, he was so early and zealous a

promoter of its use, that we think he may, in the eyes of all practical

mechanics, stand as the parent of its introduction to the workshops of

England.

It is unquestionable that at the time when Maudslay began the

improvement of machine-tools, the methods of working in wood and metals

were exceedingly imperfect. Mr. William Fairbairn has stated that when

he first became acquainted with mechanical engineering, about sixty

years ago, there were no self-acting tools; everything was executed by

hand. There were neither planing, slotting, nor shaping machines; and

the whole stock of an engineering or machine establishment might be

summed up in a few ill-constructed lathes, and a few drills and boring

machines of rude construction.[10] Our mechanics were equally backward

in contrivances for working in wood. Thus, when Sir Samuel Bentham

made a tour through the manufacturing districts of England in 1791, he

was surprised to find how little had been done to substitute the

invariable accuracy of machinery for the uncertain dexterity of the

human hand. Steam-power was as yet only employed in driving

spinning-machines, rolling metals, pumping water, and such like

purposes. In the working of wood no machinery had been introduced

beyond the common turning-lathe and some saws, and a few boring tools

used in making blocks for the navy. Even saws worked by inanimate

force for slitting timber, though in extensive use in foreign

countries, were nowhere to be found in Great Britain.[11] As

everything depended on the dexterity of hand and correctness of eye of

the workmen, the work turned out was of very unequal merit, besides

being exceedingly costly. Even in the construction of comparatively

simple machines, the expense was so great as to present a formidable

obstacle to their introduction and extensive use; and but for the

invention of machine-making tools, the use of the steam-engine in the

various forms in which it is now applied for the production of power

could never have become general.

In turning a piece of work on the old-fashioned lathe, the workman

applied and guided his tool by means of muscular strength. The work

was made to revolve, and the turner, holding the cutting tool firmly

upon the long, straight, guiding edge of the rest, along which he

carried it, and pressing its point firmly against the article to be

turned, was thus enabled to reduce its surface to the required size and

shape. Some dexterous turners were able, with practice and

carefulness, to execute very clever pieces of work by this simple

means. But when the article to be turned was of considerable size, and

especially when it was of metal, the expenditure of muscular strength

was so great that the workman soon became exhausted. The slightest

variation in the pressure of the tool led to an irregularity of

surface; and with the utmost care on the workman's part, he could not

avoid occasionally cutting a little too deep, in consequence of which

he must necessarily go over the surface again, to reduce the whole to

the level of that accidentally cut too deep; and thus possibly the job

would be altogether spoiled by the diameter of the article under

operation being made too small for its intended purpose.

The introduction of the slide rest furnished a complete remedy for this

source of imperfection. The principle of the invention consists in

constructing and fitting the rest so that, instead of being screwed

down to one place, and the tool in the hands of the workman travelling

over it, the rest shall itself hold the cutting tool firmly fixed in

it, and slide along the surface of the bench in a direction exactly

parallel with the axis of the work. Before its invention various

methods had been tried with the object of enabling the work to be

turned true independent of the dexterity of the workman. Thus, a

square steel cutter used to be firmly fixed in a bed, along which it

was wedged from point to point of the work, and tolerable accuracy was

in this way secured. But the slide rest was much more easily managed,

and the result was much more satisfactory. All that the workman had to

do, after the tool was firmly fitted into the rest, was merely to turn

a screw-handle, and thus advance the cutter along the face of the work

as required, with an expenditure of strength so slight as scarcely to

be appreciable. And even this labour has now been got rid of; for, by

an arrangement of the gearing, the slide itself has been made

self-acting, and advances with the revolution of the work in the lathe,

which thus supplies the place of the workman's hand. The accuracy of

the turning done by this beautiful yet simple arrangement is as

mechanically perfect as work can be. The pair of steel fingers which

hold the cutting tool firmly in their grasp never tire, and it moves

along the metal to be cut with an accuracy and precision which the

human hand, however skilled, could never equal.

The effects of the introduction of the slide rest were very shortly

felt in all departments of mechanism. Though it had to encounter some

of the ridicule with which new methods of working are usually received,

and for a time was spoken of in derision as "Maudslay's Go-cart,"--its

practical advantages were so decided that it gradually made its way,

and became an established tool in all the best mechanical workshops.

It was found alike capable of executing the most delicate and the most

ponderous pieces of machinery; and as slide-lathes could be

manufactured to any extent, machinery, steam-engines, and all kinds of

metal work could now be turned out in a quantity and at a price that,

but for its use, could never have been practicable. In course of time

various modifications of the machine were introduced--such as the

planing machine, the wheel-cutting machine, and other beautiful tools

on the slide-rest principle,--the result of which has been that

extraordinary development of mechanical production and power which is

so characteristic a feature of the age we live in.

"It is not, indeed, saying at all too much to state," says Mr.

Nasmyth,[12] a most competent judge in such a matter, "that its

influence in improving and extending the use of machinery has been as

great as that produced by the improvement of the steam-engine in

respect to perfecting manufactures and extending commerce, inasmuch as

without the aid of the vast accession to our power of producing perfect

mechanism which it at once supplied, we could never have worked out

into practical and profitable forms the conceptions of those master

minds who, during the last half century, have so successfully pioneered

the way for mankind. The steam-engine itself, which supplies us with

such unbounded power, owes its present perfection to this most

admirable means of giving to metallic objects the most precise and

perfect geometrical forms. How could we, for instance, have good

steam-engines if we had not the means of boring out a true cylinder, or

turning a true piston-rod, or planing a valve face? It is this alone

which has furnished us with the means of carrying into practice the

accumulated result's of scientific investigation on mechanical

subjects. It would be blamable indeed," continues Mr. Nasmyth, "after

having endeavoured to set forth the vast advantages which have been

conferred on the mechanical world, and therefore on mankind generally,

by the invention and introduction of the Slide Rest, were I to suppress

the name of that admirable individual to whom we are indebted for this

powerful agent towards the attainment of mechanical perfection. I

allude to Henry Maudslay, whose useful life was enthusiastically

devoted to the grand object of improving our means of producing perfect

workmanship and machinery: to him we are certainly indebted for the

slide rest, and, consequently, to say the least, we are indirectly so

for the vast benefits which have resulted from the introduction of so

powerful an agent in perfecting our machinery and mechanism generally.

The indefatigable care which he took in inculcating and diffusing among

his workmen, and mechanical men generally, sound ideas of practical

knowledge and refined views of construction, have rendered and ever

will continue to render his name identified with all that is noble in

the ambition of a lover of mechanical perfection."

One of the first uses to which Mr. Maudslay applied the improved slide

rest, which he perfected shortly after beginning business in Margaret

Street, Cavendish Square, was in executing the requisite tools and

machinery required by Mr. (afterwards Sir Marc Isambard) Brunel for

manufacturing ships' blocks. The career of Brunel was of a more

romantic character than falls to the ordinary lot of mechanical

engineers. His father was a small farmer and postmaster, at the

village of Hacqueville, in Normandy, where Marc Isambard was born in

1769. He was early intended for a priest, and educated accordingly.

But he was much fonder of the carpenter's shop than of the school; and

coaxing, entreaty, and punishment alike failed in making a hopeful

scholar of him. He drew faces and plans until his father was almost in

despair. Sent to school at Rouen, his chief pleasure was in watching

the ships along the quays; and one day his curiosity was excited by the

sight of some large iron castings just landed. What were they? How had

they been made? Where did they come from? His eager inquiries were soon

answered. They were parts of an engine intended for the great Paris

water-works; the engine was to pump water by the power of steam; and

the castings had been made in England, and had just been landed from an

English ship. "England!" exclaimed the boy, "ah! when I am a man I

will go see the country where such grand machines are made!" On one

occasion, seeing a new tool in a cutler's window, he coveted it so much

that he pawned his hat to possess it. This was not the right road to

the priesthood; and his father soon saw that it was of no use urging

him further: but the boy's instinct proved truer than the father's

judgment.

It was eventually determined that he should qualify himself to enter

the royal navy, and at seventeen he was nominated to serve in a

corvette as "volontaire d'honneur." His ship was paid off in 1792, and

he was at Paris during the trial of the King. With the incautiousness

of youth he openly avowed his royalist opinions in the cafe which he

frequented. On the very day that Louis was condemned to death, Brunel

had an angry altercation with some ultra-republicans, after which he

called to his dog, "Viens, citoyen!" Scowling looks were turned upon

him, and he deemed it expedient to take the first opportunity of

escaping from the house, which he did by a back-door, and made the best

of his way to Hacqueville. From thence he went to Rouen, and succeeded

in finding a passage on board an American ship, in which he sailed for

New York, having first pledged his affections to an English girl,

Sophia Kingdom, whom he had accidentally met at the house of Mr.

Carpentier, the American consul at Rouen.

Arrived in America, he succeeded in finding employment as assistant

surveyor of a tract of land along the Black River, near Lake Ontario.

In the intervals of his labours he made occasional visits to New York,

and it was there that the first idea of his block-machinery occurred to

him. He carried his idea back with him into the woods, where it often

mingled with his thoughts of Sophia Kingdom, by this time safe in

England after passing through the horrors of a French prison. "My

first thought of the block-machinery," he once said, "was at a dinner

party at Major-General Hamilton's, in New York; my second under an

American tree, when, one day that I was carving letters on its bark,

the turn of one of them reminded me of it, and I thought, 'Ah! my

block! so it must be.' And what do you think were the letters I was

cutting? Of course none other than S. K." Brunel subsequently

obtained some employment as an architect in New York, and promulgated

various plans for improving the navigation of the principal rivers.

Among the designs of his which were carried out, was that of the Park

Theatre at New York, and a cannon foundry, in which he introduced

improvements in casting and boring big guns. But being badly paid for

his work, and a powerful attraction drawing him constantly towards

England, he determined to take final leave of America, which he did in

1799, and landed at Falmouth in the following March. There he again

met Miss Kingdom, who had remained faithful to him during his six long

years of exile, and the pair were shortly after united for life.

Brunel was a prolific inventor. During his residence in America, he

had planned many contrivances in his mind, which he now proceeded to

work out. The first was a duplicate writing and drawing machine, which

he patented. The next was a machine for twisting cotton thread and

forming it into balls; but omitting to protect it by a patent, he

derived no benefit from the invention, though it shortly came into very

general use. He then invented a machine for trimmings and borders for

muslins, lawns, and cambrics,--of the nature of a sewing machine. His

famous block-machinery formed the subject of his next patent.

It may be explained that the making of the blocks employed in the

rigging of ships for raising and lowering the sails, masts, and yards,

was then a highly important branch of manufacture. Some idea may be

formed of the number used in the Royal Navy alone, from the fact that a

74-gun ship required to be provided with no fewer than 1400 blocks of

various sizes. The sheaved blocks used for the running rigging

consisted of the shell, the sheaves, which revolved within the shell,

and the pins which fastened them together. The fabrication of these

articles, though apparently simple, was in reality attended with much

difficulty. Every part had to be fashioned with great accuracy and

precision to ensure the easy working of the block when put together, as

any hitch in the raising or lowering of the sails might, on certain

emergencies, occasion a serious disaster. Indeed, it became clear that

mere hand-work was not to be relied on in the manufacture of these

articles, and efforts were early made to produce them by means of

machinery of the most perfect kind that could be devised. In 1781, Mr.

Taylor, of Southampton, set up a large establishment on the river

Itchen for their manufacture; and on the expiry of his contract, the

Government determined to establish works of their own in Portsmouth

Dockyard, for the purpose at the same time of securing greater economy,

and of being independent of individual makers in the supply of an

article of such importance in the equipment of ships.

Sir Samuel Bentham, who then filled the office of Inspector-General of

Naval Works, was a highly ingenious person, and had for some years been

applying his mind to the invention of improved machinery for working in

wood. He had succeeded in introducing into the royal dockyards

sawing-machines and planing-machines of a superior kind, as well as

block-making machines. Thus the specification of one of his patents,

taken out in 1793, clearly describes a machine for shaping the shells

of the blocks, in a manner similar to that afterwards specified by

Brunel. Bentham had even proceeded with the erection of a building in

Portsmouth Dockyard for the manufacture of the blocks after his method,

the necessary steam-engine being already provided; but with a singular

degree of candour and generosity, on Brunel's method being submitted to

him, Sir Samuel at once acknowledged its superiority to his own, and

promised to recommend its adoption by the authorities in his department.

The circumstance of Mrs. Brunel's brother being Under-Secretary to the

Navy Board at the time, probably led Brunel in the first instance to

offer his invention to the Admiralty. A great deal, however, remained

to be done before he could bring his ideas of the block-machinery into

a definite shape; for there is usually a wide interval between the

first conception of an intricate machine and its practical realization.

Though Brunel had a good knowledge of mechanics, and was able to master

the intricacies of any machine, he laboured under the disadvantage of

not being a practical mechanic and it is probable that but for the help

of someone possessed of this important qualification, his invention,

ingenious and important though it was, would have borne no practical

fruits. It was at this juncture that he was so fortunate as to be

introduced to Henry Maudslay, the inventor of the sliderest.

It happened that a M. de Bacquancourt, one of the French emigres, of

whom there were then so many in London, was accustomed almost daily to

pass Maudslay's little shop in Wells-street, and being himself an

amateur turner, he curiously inspected the articles from time to time

exhibited in the window of the young mechanic. One day a more than

ordinarily nice piece of screw-cutting made its appearance, on which he

entered the shop to make inquiries as to the method by which it had

been executed. He had a long conversation with Maudslay, with whom he

was greatly pleased; and he was afterwards accustomed to look in upon

him occasionally to see what new work was going on. Bacquancourt was

also on intimate terms with Brunel, who communicated to him the

difficulty he had experienced in finding a mechanic of sufficient

dexterity to execute his design of the block-making machinery. It

immediately occurred to the former that Henry Maudslay was the very man

to execute work of the elaborate character proposed, and he described

to Brunel the new and beautiful tools which Maudslay had contrived for

the purpose of ensuring accuracy and finish. Brunel at once determined

to call upon Maudslay, and it was arranged that Bacquancourt should

introduce him, which he did, and after the interview which took place

Brunel promised to call again with the drawings of his proposed model.