recognised. His father, Alexander Nasmyth of Edinburgh, was a
landscape-painter of great eminence, whose works are sometimes
confounded with those of his son Patrick, called the English Hobbema,
though his own merits are peculiar and distinctive. The elder Nasmyth
was also an admirable portrait painter, as his head of Burns--the best
ever painted of the poet--bears ample witness. His daughters, the
Misses Nasmyth, were highly skilled painters of landscape, and their
works are well known and much prized. James, the youngest of the
family, inherits the same love of art, though his name is more
extensively known as a worker and inventor in iron. He was born at
Edinburgh, on the 19th of August, 1808; and his attention was early
directed to mechanics by the circumstance of this being one of his
father's hobbies. Besides being an excellent painter, Mr. Nasmyth had
a good general knowledge of architecture and civil engineering, and
could work at the lathe and handle tools with the dexterity of a
mechanic. He employed nearly the whole of his spare time in a little
workshop which adjoined his studio, where he encouraged his youngest
son to work with him in all sorts of materials. Among his visitors at
the studio were Professor Leslie, Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, and
other men of distinction. He assisted Mr. Miller in his early
experiments with paddle-boats, which eventually led to the invention of
the steamboat. It was a great advantage for the boy to be trained by a
father who so loved excellence in all its forms, and could minister to
his love of mechanics by his own instruction and practice. James used
to drink in with pleasure and profit the conversation which passed
between his father and his visitors on scientific and mechanical
subjects; and as he became older, the resolve grew stronger in him
every day that he would be a mechanical engineer, and nothing else. At
a proper age, he was sent to the High School, then as now celebrated
for the excellence of its instruction, and there he laid the
foundations of a sound and liberal education. But he has himself told
the simple story of his early life in such graphic terms that we feel
we cannot do better than quote his own words:--[1]
"I had the good luck," he says, "to have for a school companion the son
of an iron founder. Every spare hour that I could command was devoted
to visits to his father's iron foundry, where I delighted to watch the
various processes of moulding, iron-melting, casting, forging,
pattern-making, and other smith and metal work; and although I was only
about twelve years old at the time, I used to lend a hand, in which
hearty zeal did a good deal to make up for want of strength. I look
back to the Saturday afternoons spent in the workshops of that small
foundry, as an important part of my education. I did not trust to
reading about such and such things; I saw and handled them; and all the
ideas in connection with them became permanent in my mind. I also
obtained there--what was of much value to me in after life--a
considerable acquaintance with the nature and characters of workmen.
By the time I was fifteen, I could work and turn out really respectable
jobs in wood, brass, iron, and steel: indeed, in the working of the
latter inestimable material, I had at a very early age (eleven or
twelve) acquired considerable proficiency. As that was the pre-lucifer
match period, the possession of a steel and tinder box was quite a
patent of nobility among boys. So I used to forge old files into
'steels' in my father's little workshop, and harden them and produce
such first-rate, neat little articles in that line, that I became quite
famous amongst my school companions; and many a task have I had excused
me by bribing the monitor, whose grim sense of duty never could
withstand the glimpse of a steel.
"My first essay at making a steam engine was when I was fifteen. I
then made a real working; steam-engine, 1 3/4 diameter cylinder, and 8
in. stroke, which not only could act, but really did some useful work;
for I made it grind the oil colours which my father required for his
painting. Steam engine models, now so common, were exceedingly scarce
in those days, and very difficult to be had; and as the demand for them
arose, I found it both delightful and profitable to make them; as well
as sectional models of steam engines, which I introduced for the
purpose of exhibiting the movements of all the parts, both exterior and
interior. With the results of the sale of such models I was enabled to
pay the price of tickets of admission to the lectures on natural
philosophy and chemistry delivered in the University of Edinburgh.
About the same time (1826) I was so happy as to be employed by
Professor Leslie in making models and portions of apparatus required by
him for his lectures and philosophical investigations, and I had also
the inestimable good fortune to secure his friendship. His admirably
clear manner of communicating a knowledge of the fundamental principles
of mechanical science rendered my intercourse with him of the utmost
importance to myself. A hearty, cheerful, earnest desire to toil in
his service, caused him to take pleasure in instructing me by
occasional explanations of what might otherwise have remained obscure.
"About the years 1827 and 1828, the subject of steam-carriages for
common roads occupied much of the attention of the public. Many tried
to solve the problem. I made a working model of an engine which
performed so well that some friends determined to give me the means of
making one on a larger scale. This I did; and I shall never forget the
pleasure and the downright hard work I had in producing, in the autumn
of 1828, at an outlay of 60L., a complete steam-carriage, that ran many
a mile with eight persons on it. After keeping it in action two
months, to the satisfaction of all who were interested in it, my
friends allowed me to dispose of it, and I sold it a great bargain,
after which the engine was used in driving a small factory. I may
mention that in that engine I employed the waste steam to cause an
increased draught by its discharge up the chimney. This important use
of the waste steam had been introduced by George Stephenson some years
before, though entirely unknown to me.
"The earnest desire which I cherished of getting forward in the real
business of life induced me to turn my attention to obtaining
employment in some of the great engineering establishments of the day,
at the head of which, in my fancy as well as in reality, stood that of
Henry Maudslay, of London. It was the summit of my ambition to get
work in that establishment; but as my father had not the means of
paying a premium, I determined to try what I could do towards attaining
my object by submitting to Mr. Maudslay actual specimens of my
capability as a young workman and draughtsman. To this end I set to
work and made a small steam-engine, every part of which was the result
of my own handiwork, including the casting and the forging of the
several parts. This I turned out in such a style as I should even now
be proud of. My sample drawings were, I may say, highly respectable.
Armed with such means of obtaining the good opinion of the great Henry
Maudslay, on the 19th of May, 1829, I sailed for London in a Leith
smack, and after an eight days' voyage saw the metropolis for the first
time. I made bold to call on Mr. Maudslay, and told him my simple
tale. He desired me to bring my models for him to look at. I did so,
and when he came to me I could see by the expression of his cheerful,
well-remembered countenance, that I had attained my object. He then
and there appointed me to be his own private workman, to assist him in
his little paradise of a workshop, furnished with the models of
improved machinery and engineering tools of which he has been the great
originator. He left me to arrange as to wages with his chief cashier,
Mr. Robert Young, and on the first Saturday evening I accordingly went
to the counting-house to enquire of him about my pay. He asked me what
would satisfy me. Knowing the value of the situation I had obtained,
and having a very modest notion of my worthiness to occupy it, I said,
that if he would not consider 10s. a week too much, I thought I could
do very well with that. I suppose he concluded that I had some means
of my own to live on besides the 10s. a week which I asked. He little
knew that I had determined not to cost my father another farthing when
I left-home to begin the world on my own account. My proposal was at
once acceded to. And well do I remember the pride and delight I felt
when I carried to my three shillings a week lodging that night my first
wages. Ample they were in my idea; for I knew how little I could live
on, and was persuaded that by strict economy I could easily contrive to
make the money support me. To help me in this object, I contrived a
small cooking apparatus, which I forthwith got made by a tinsmith in
Lambeth, at a cost of 6s., and by its aid I managed to keep the eating
and drinking part of my private account within 3s. 6d. per week, or 4s.
at the outside. I had three meat dinners a week, and generally four
rice and milk dinners, all of which were cooked by my little apparatus,
which I set in action after breakfast. The oil cost not quite a
halfpenny per day. The meat dinners consisted of a stew of from a half
to three quarters of a lb. of leg of beef, the meat costing 3 1/2d.
per lb., which, with sliced potatoes and a little onion, and as much
water as just covered all, with a sprinkle of salt and black pepper, by
the time I returned to dinner at half-past six furnished a repast in
every respect as good as my appetite. For breakfast I had coffee and a
due proportion of quartern loaf. After the first year of my employment
under Mr. Maudslay, my wages were raised to 15s. a week, and I then,
but not till then, indulged in the luxury of butter to my bread. I am
the more particular in all this, to show you that I was a thrifty
housekeeper, although only a lodger in a 3s. room. I have the old
apparatus by me yet, and I shall have another dinner out of it ere I am
a year older, out of regard to days that were full of the real romance
of life.
"On the death of Henry Maudslay in 1831, I passed over to the service
of his worthy partner, Mr. Joshua Field, and acted as his draughtsman,
much to my advantage, until the end of that year, when I returned to
Edinburgh, to construct a small stock of engineering tools for the
purpose of enabling me to start in business on my own account. This
occupied me until the spring of 1833, and during the interval I was
accustomed to take in jobs to execute in my little workshop in
Edinburgh, so as to obtain the means of completing my stock of
tools.[2] In June, 1834, I went to Manchester, and took a flat of an
old mill in Dale Street, where I began business. In two years my stock
had so increased as to overload the floor of the old building to such
an extent that the land lord, Mr. Wrenn, became alarmed, especially as
the tenant below me--a glass-cutter--had a visit from the end of a
20-horse engine beam one morning among his cut tumblers. To set their
anxiety at rest, I went out that evening to Patricroft and took a look
at a rather choice bit of land bounded on one side by the canal, and on
the other by the Liverpool and Manchester Railway. By the end of the
week I had secured a lease of the site for 999 years; by the end of the
month my wood sheds were erected; the ring of the hammer on the smith's
anvil was soon heard all over the place; and the Bridgewater Foundry
was fairly under way. There I toiled right heartily until December
31st, 1856, when I retired to enjoy in active leisure the reward of a
laborious life, during which, with the blessing of God, I enjoyed much
true happiness through the hearty love which I always had for my
profession; and I trust I may be allowed to say, without undue vanity,
that I have left behind me some useful results of my labours in those
inventions with which my name is identified, which have had no small
share in the accomplishment of some of the greatest mechanical works of
our age." If Mr. Nasmyth had accomplished nothing more than the
invention of his steam-hammer, it would have been enough to found a
reputation. Professor Tomlinson describes it as "one of the most
perfect of artificial machines and noblest triumphs of mind over matter
that modern English engineers have yet developed." [3]
The hand-hammer has always been an important tool, and, in the form of
the stone celt, it was perhaps the first invented. When the hammer of
iron superseded that of stone, it was found practicable in the hands of
a "cunning" workman to execute by its means metal work of great beauty
and even delicacy. But since the invention of cast-iron, and the
manufacture of wrought-iron in large masses, the art of hammer-working
has almost become lost; and great artists, such as Matsys of Antwerp
and Rukers of Nuremberg were,[4] no longer think it worth their while
to expend time and skill in working on so humble a material as
wrought-iron. It is evident from the marks of care and elaborate
design which many of these early works exhibit, that the workman's
heart was in his work, and that his object was not merely to get it out
of hand, but to execute it in first-rate artistic style.
When the use of iron extended and larger ironwork came to be forged,
for cannon, tools, and machinery, the ordinary hand-hammer was found
insufficient, and the helve or forge-hammer was invented. This was
usually driven by a water-wheel, or by oxen or horses. The tilt-hammer
was another form in which it was used, the smaller kinds being worked
by the foot. Among Watt's various inventions, was a tilt-hammer of
considerable power, which he at first worked by means of a water-wheel,
and afterwards by a steam engine regulated by a fly-wheel. His first
hammer of this kind was 120 lbs. in weight; it was raised eight inches
before making each blow. Watt afterwards made a tilt-hammer for Mr.
Wilkinson of Bradley Forge, of 7 1/2 cwt., and it made 300 blows a
minute. Other improvements were made in the hammer from time to time,
but no material alteration was made in the power by which it was worked
until Mr. Nasmyth took it in hand, and applying to it the force of
steam, at once provided the worker in iron with the most formidable of
machine-tools. This important invention originated as follows:
In the early part of 1837, the directors of the Great Western
Steam-Ship Company sent Mr. Francis Humphries, their engineer, to
consult Mr. Nasmyth as to some engineering tools of unusual size and
power, which were required for the construction of the engines of the
"Great Britain" steamship. They had determined to construct those
engines on the vertical trunk-engine principle, in accordance with Mr.
Humphries' designs; and very complete works were erected by them at
their Bristol dockyard for the execution of the requisite machinery,
the most important of the tools being supplied by Nasmyth and Gaskell.
The engines were in hand, when a difficulty arose with respect to the
enormous paddle-shaft of the vessel, which was of such a size of
forging as had never before been executed. Mr. Humphries applied to
the largest engineering firms throughout the country for tenders of the
price at which they would execute this part of the work, but to his
surprise and dismay he found that not one of the firms he applied to
would undertake so large a forging. In this dilemma he wrote to Mr.
Nasmyth on the 24th November,1838, informing him of this unlooked-for
difficulty. "I find," said he, "there is not a forge-hammer in England
or Scotland powerful enough to forge the paddle-shaft of the engines
for the 'Great Britain!' What am I to do? Do you think I might dare to
use cast-iron?"
This letter immediately set Mr. Nasmyth a-thinking. How was it that
existing hammers were incapable of forging a wrought-iron shaft of
thirty inches diameter? Simply because of their want of compass, or
range and fall, as well as power of blow. A few moments' rapid thought
satisfied him that it was by rigidly adhering to the old traditional
form of hand-hammer--of which the tilt, though driven by steam, was but
a modification--that the difficulty had arisen. When even the largest
hammer was tilted up to its full height, its range was so small, that
when a piece of work of considerable size was placed on the anvil, the
hammer became "gagged," and, on such an occasion, where the forging
required the most powerful blow, it received next to no blow at
all,--the clear space for fall being almost entirely occupied by the
work on the anvil.
The obvious remedy was to invent some method, by which a block of iron
should be lifted to a sufficient height above the object on which it
was desired to strike a blow, and let the block fall down upon the
work,--guiding it in its descent by such simple means as should give
the required precision in the percussive action of the falling mass.
Following out this idea, Mr. Nasmyth at once sketched on paper his
steam-hammer, having it clearly before him in his mind's eye a few
minutes after receiving Mr. Humphries' letter narrating his
unlooked-for difficulty. The hammer, as thus sketched, consisted of,
first an anvil on which to rest the work; second, a block of iron
constituting the hammer or blow-giving part; third, an inverted
steam-cylinder to whose piston-rod the block was attached. All that
was then required to produce by such means a most effective hammer, was
simply to admit steam in the cylinder so as to act on the under side of
the piston, and so raise the block attached to the piston-rod, and by a
simple contrivance to let the steam escape and so permit the block
rapidly to descend by its own gravity upon the work then on the anvil.
Such, in a few words, is the rationale of the steam-hammer.
By the same day's post, Mr. Nasmyth wrote to Mr. Humphries, inclosing a
sketch of the invention by which he proposed to forge the "Great
Britain" paddle-shaft. Mr. Humphries showed it to Mr. Brunel, the
engineer-inchief of the company, to Mr. Guppy, the managing director,
and to others interested in the undertaking, by all of whom it was
heartily approved. Mr. Nasmyth gave permission to communicate his
plans to such forge proprietors as might feel disposed to erect such a
hammer to execute the proposed work,--the only condition which he made
being, that in the event of his hammer being adopted, he was to be
allowed to supply it according to his own design.
The paddle-shaft of the "Great Britain" was, however, never forged.
About that time, the substitution of the Screw for the Paddle-wheel as
a means of propulsion of steam-vessels was attracting much attention;
and the performances of the "Archimedes" were so successful as to
induce Mr. Brunel to recommend his Directors to adopt the new power.
They yielded to his entreaty. The great engines which Mr. Humphries
had designed were accordingly set aside; and he was required to produce
fresh designs of engines suited for screw propulsion. The result was
fatal to Mr. Humphries. The labour, the anxiety, and perhaps the
disappointment, proved too much for him, and a brain-fever carried him
off; so that neither his great paddle-shaft nor Mr. Nasmyth's
steam-hammer to forge it was any longer needed.
The hammer was left to bide its time. No forge-master would take it
up. The inventor wrote to all the great firms, urging its superiority
to every other tool for working malleable iron into all kinds of forge
work. Thus he wrote and sent illustrative sketches of his hammer to
Accramans and Morgan of Bristol, to the late Benjamin Hick and Rushton
and Eckersley of Bolton, to Howard and Ravenhill of Rotherhithe, and
other firms; but unhappily bad times for the iron trade had set in; and
although all to whom he communicated his design were much struck with
its simplicity and obvious advantages, the answer usually given
was--"We have not orders enough to keep in work the forge-hammers we
already have, and we do not desire at present to add any new ones,
however improved." At that time no patent had been taken out for the
invention. Mr. Nasmyth had not yet saved money enough to enable him to
do so on his own account; and his partner declined to spend money upon
a tool that no engineer would give the firm an order for. No secret
was made of the invention, and, excepting to its owner, it did not seem
to be worth one farthing.
Such was the unpromising state of affairs, when M. Schneider, of the
Creusot Iron Works in France, called at the Patricroft works together
with his practical mechanic M. Bourdon, for the purpose of ordering
some tools of the firm. Mr. Nasmyth was absent on a journey at the
time, but his partner, Mr. Gaskell, as an act of courtesy to the
strangers, took the opportunity of showing them all that was new and
interesting in regard to mechanism about the works. And among other
things, Mr. Gaskell brought out his partner's sketch or "Scheme book,"
which lay in a drawer in the office, and showed them the design of the
Steam Hammer, which no English firm would adopt. They were much struck
with its simplicity and practical utility; and M. Bourdon took careful
note of its arrangements. Mr. Nasmyth on his return was informed of
the visit of MM. Schneider and Bourdon, but the circumstance of their
having inspected the design of his steam-hammer seems to have been
regarded by his partner as too trivial a matter to be repeated to him;
and he knew nothing of the circumstance until his visit to France in
April, 1840. When passing through the works at Creusot with M.
Bourdon, Mr. Nasmyth saw a crank shaft of unusual size, not only forged
in the piece, but punched. He immediately asked, "How did you forge
that shaft?" M. Bourdon's answer was, "Why, with your hammer, to be
sure!" Great indeed was Nasmyth's surprise; for he had never yet seen
the hammer, except in his own drawing! A little explanation soon
cleared all up. M. Bourdon said he had been so much struck with the
ingenuity and simplicity of the arrangement, that he had no sooner
returned than he set to work, and had a hammer made in general
accordance with the design Mr. Gaskell had shown him; and that its
performances had answered his every expectation. He then took Mr.
Nasmyth to see the steam-hammer; and great was his delight at seeing
the child of his brain in full and active work. It was not, according
to Mr. Nasmyth's ideas, quite perfect, and he readily suggested several
improvements, conformable with the original design, which M. Bourdon
forthwith adopted.
On reaching England, Mr. Nasmyth at once wrote to his partner telling
him what he had seen, and urging that the taking out of a patent for
the protection of the invention ought no longer to be deferred. But
trade was still very much depressed, and as the Patricroft firm needed
all their capital to carry on their business, Mr. Gaskell objected to
lock any of it up in engineering novelties. Seeing himself on the
brink of losing his property in the invention, Mr. Nasmyth applied to
his brother-in-law, William Bennett, Esq., who advanced him the
requisite money for the purpose--about 280L.,--and the patent was
secured in June 1840. The first hammer, of 30 cwt., was made for the
Patricroft works, with the consent of the partners; and in the course
of a few weeks it was in full work. The precision and beauty of its
action--the perfect ease with which it was managed, and the untiring
force of its percussive blows--were the admiration of all who saw it;
and from that moment the steam-hammer became a recognised power in
modern mechanics. The variety or gradation of its blows was such, that
it was found practicable to manipulate a hammer of ten tons as easily
as if it had only been of ten ounces weight. It was under such
complete control that while descending with its greatest momentum, it
could be arrested at any point with even greater ease than any
instrument used by hand. While capable of forging an Armstrong
hundred-pounder, or the sheet-anchor for a ship of the line, it could
hammer a nail, or crack a nut without bruising the kernel. When it
came into general use, the facilities which it afforded for executing
all kinds of forging had the effect of greatly increasing the quantity
of work done, at the same time that expense was saved. The cost of
making anchors was reduced by at least 50 per cent., while the quality
of the forging was improved. Before its invention the manufacture of a
shaft of 15 or 20 cwt. required the concentrated exertions of a large
establishment, and its successful execution was regarded as a great
triumph of skill; whereas forgings of 20 and 30 tons weight are now
things of almost every-day occurrence. Its advantages were so obvious,
that its adoption soon became general, and in the course of a few years
Nasmyth steam-hammers were to be found in every well-appointed workshop
both at home and abroad. Many modifications have been made in the
tool, by Condie, Morrison, Naylor, Rigby, and others; but Nasmyth's was
the father of them all, and still holds its ground.[5]
Among the important uses to which this hammer has of late years been
applied, is the manufacture of iron plates for covering our ships of
war, and the fabrication of the immense wrought-iron ordnance of
Armstrong, Whitworth, and Blakely. But for the steam-hammer, indeed,
it is doubtful whether such weapons could have been made. It is also
used for the re-manufacture of iron in various other forms, to say
nothing of the greatly extended use which it has been the direct means
of effecting in wrought-iron and steel forgings in every description of
machinery, from the largest marine steam-engines to the most nice and
delicate parts of textile mechanism. "It is not too much to say,"
observes a writer in the Engineer, "that, without Nasmyth's
steam-hammer, we must have stopped short in many of those gigantic
engineering works which, but for the decay of all wonder in us, would
be the perpetual wonder of this age, and which have enabled our modern
engineers to take rank above the gods of all mythologies. There is one
use to which the steam-hammer is now becoming extensively applied by
some of our manufacturers that deserves especial mention, rather for
the prospect which it opens to us than for what has already been
actually accomplished. We allude to the manufacture of large articles
in DIES. At one manufactory in the country, railway wheels, for
example, are being manufactured with enormous economy by this means.
The various parts of the wheels are produced in quantity either by
rolling or by dies under the hammer; these parts are brought together
in their relative positions in a mould, heated to a welding heat, and
then by a blow of the steam hammer, furnished with dies, are stamped
into a complete and all but finished wheel. It is evident that
wherever wrought-iron articles of a manageable size have to be produced
in considerable quantities, the same process may be adopted, and the
saving effected by the substitution of this for the ordinary forging
process will doubtless ere long prove incalculable. For this, as for
the many other advantageous uses of the steam-hammer, we are primarily
and mainly indebted to Mr. Nasmyth. It is but right, therefore, that
we should hold his name in honour. In fact, when we think of the
universal service which this machine is rendering us, we feel that some
special expression of our indebtedness to him would be a reasonable and
grateful service. The benefit which he has conferred upon us is so
great as to justly entitle him to stand side by side with the few men
who have gained name and fame as great inventive engineers, and to whom
we have testified our gratitude--usually, unhappily, when it was too
late for them to enjoy it."
Mr. Nasmyth subsequently applied the principle of the steam-hammer in
the pile driver, which he invented in 1845. Until its production, all
piles had been driven by means of a small mass of iron falling upon the
head of the pile with great velocity from a considerable height,--the
raising of the iron mass by means of the "monkey" being an operation
that occupied much time and labour, with which the results were very
incommensurate. Pile-driving was, in Mr. Nasmyth's words, conducted on
the artillery or cannon-ball principle; the action being excessive and
the mass deficient, and adapted rather for destructive than impulsive
action. In his new and beautiful machine, he applied the elastic force
of steam in raising the ram or driving block, on which, the block being
disengaged, its whole weight of three tons descended on the head of the
pile, and the process being repeated eighty times in the minute, the
pile was sent home with a rapidity that was quite marvellous compared
with the old-fashioned system. In forming coffer-dams for the piers
and abutments of bridges, quays, and harbours, and in piling the
foundations of all kinds of masonry, the steam pile driver was found of
invaluable use by the engineer. At the first experiment made with the
machine, Mr. Nasmyth drove a 14-inch pile fifteen feet into hard ground
at the rate of 65 blows a minute. The driver was first used in forming
the great steam dock at Devonport, where the results were very
striking; and it was shortly after employed by Robert Stephenson in
piling the foundations of the great High Level Bridge at Newcastle, and
the Border Bridge at Berwick, as well as in several other of his great
works. The saving of time effected by this machine was very
remarkable, the ratio being as 1 to 1800; that is, a pile could be
driven in four minutes that before required twelve hours. One of the
peculiar features of the invention was that of employing the pile
itself as the support of the steam-hammer part of the apparatus while
it was being driven, so that the pile had the percussive action of the
dead weight of the hammer as well as its lively blows to induce it to
sink into the ground. The steam-hammer sat as it were on the shoulders
of the pile, while it dealt forth its ponderous blows on the pile-head
at the rate of 80 a minute, and as the pile sank, the hammer followed
it down with never relaxing activity until it was driven home to the
required depth. One of the most ingenious contrivances employed in the
driver, which was also adopted in the hammer, was the use of steam as a
buffer in the upper part of the cylinder, which had the effect of a
recoil spring, and greatly enhanced the force of the downward blow.
In 1846, Mr. Nasmyth designed a form of steam-engine after that of his
steam-hammer, which has been extensively adopted all over the world for
screw-ships of all sizes. The pyramidal form of this engine, its great
simplicity and GET-AT-ABILITY of parts, together with the circumstance
that all the weighty parts of the engine are kept low, have rendered it
a universal favourite. Among the other labour-saving tools invented by
Mr. Nasmyth, may be mentioned the well-known planing machine for small
work, called "Nasmyth's Steam Arm," now used in every large workshop.
It was contrived for the purpose of executing a large order for
locomotives received from the Great Western Railway, and was found of
great use in accelerating the work, especially in planing the links,
levers, connecting rods, and smaller kinds of wrought-iron work in
those engines. His circular cutter for toothed wheels was another of
his handy inventions, which shortly came into general use. In
iron-founding also he introduced a valuable practical improvement. The
old mode of pouring the molten metal into the moulds was by means of a
large ladle with one or two cross handles and levers; but many dreadful
accidents occurred through a slip of the hand, and Mr. Nasmyth
resolved, if possible, to prevent them. The plan he adopted was to fix
a worm-wheel on the side of the ladle, into which a worm was geared,
and by this simple contrivance one man was enabled to move the largest
ladle on its axis with perfect ease and safety. By this means the work
was more promptly performed, and accidents entirely avoided.
Mr. Nasmyth's skill in invention was backed by great energy and a large
fund of common sense--qualities not often found united. These proved
of much service to the concern of which he was the head, and indeed
constituted the vital force. The firm prospered as it deserved; and
they executed orders not only for England, but for most countries in
the civilized world. Mr. Nasmyth had the advantage of being trained in
a good school--that of Henry Maudslay--where he had not only learnt
handicraft under the eye of that great mechanic, but the art of
organizing labour, and (what is of great value to an employer)
knowledge of the characters of workmen. Yet the Nasmyth firm were not
without their troubles as respected the mechanics in their employment,
and on one occasion they had to pass through the ordeal of a very
formidable strike. The manner in which the inventor of the
steam-hammer literally "Scotched" this strike was very characteristic.
A clever young man employed by the firm as a brass founder, being found
to have a peculiar capacity for skilled mechanical work, had been
advanced to the lathe. The other men objected to his being so employed
on the ground that it was against the rules of the trade. "But he is a
first-rate workman," replied the employers, "and we think it right to
advance a man according to his conduct and his merits." "No matter,"
said the workmen, "it is against the rules, and if you do not take the
man from the lathe, we must turn out." "Very well; we hold to our
right of selecting the best men for the best places, and we will not
take the man from the lathe." The consequence was a general turn out.
Pickets were set about the works, and any stray men who went thither to
seek employment were waylaid, and if not induced to turn back, were
maltreated or annoyed until they were glad to leave. The works were
almost at a standstill. This state of things could not be allowed to
go on, and the head of the firm bestirred himself accordingly with his
usual energy. He went down to Scotland, searched all the best
mechanical workshops there, and after a time succeeded in engaging
sixty-four good hands. He forbade them coming by driblets, but held
them together until there was a full freight; and then they came, with
their wives, families, chests of drawers, and eight-day clocks, in a
steamboat specially hired for their transport from Greenock to
Liverpool. From thence they came by special train to Patricroft, where
houses were in readiness for their reception. The arrival of so
numerous, well-dressed, and respectable a corps of workmen and their
families was an event in the neighbourhood, and could not fail to
strike the "pickets" with surprise. Next morning the sixty-four
Scotchmen assembled in the yard at Patricroft, and after giving "three
cheers," went quietly to their work. The "picketing" went on for a
little while longer, but it was of no use against a body of strong men
who stood "shouther to shouther," as the new hands did. It was even
bruited about that there were more trains to follow! It very soon
became clear that the back of the strike was broken. The men returned
to their work, and the clever brass founder continued at his
turning-lathe, from which he speedily rose to still higher employment.
Notwithstanding the losses and suffering occasioned by strikes, Mr.
Nasmyth holds the opinion that they have on the whole produced much
more good than evil. They have served to stimulate invention in an
extraordinary degree. Some of the most important labour-saving
processes now in common use are directly traceable to them. In the
case of many of our most potent self-acting tools and machines,
manufacturers could not be induced to adopt them until compelled to do
so by strikes. This was the ease with the self-acting mule, the
wool-combing machine, the planing machine, the slotting machine,
Nasmyth's steam arm, and many others. Thus, even in the mechanical
world, there may be "a soul of goodness in things evil."
Mr. Nasmyth retired from business in December, 1856. He had the moral
courage to come out of the groove which he had so laboriously made for
himself, and to leave a large and prosperous business, saying, "I have
now enough of this world's goods; let younger men have their chance."
He settled down at his rural retreat in Kent, but not to lead a life of
idle ease. Industry had become his habit, and active occupation was
necessary to his happiness. He fell back upon the cultivation of those
artistic tastes which are the heritage of his family. When a boy at
the High School of Edinburgh, he was so skilful in making pen and ink
illustrations on the margins of the classics, that he thus often
purchased from his monitors exemption from the lessons of the day. Nor
had he ceased to cultivate the art during his residence at Patricroft,
but was accustomed to fall back upon it for relaxation and enjoyment
amid the pursuits of trade. That he possesses remarkable fertility of
imagination, and great skill in architectural and landscape drawing, as
well as in the much more difficult art of delineating the human figure,
will be obvious to any one who has seen his works,--more particularly
his "City of St. Ann's," "The Fairies," and "Everybody for ever!"
which last was exhibited in Pall Mail, among the recent collection of
works of Art by amateurs and others, for relief of the Lancashire
distress. He has also brought his common sense to bear on such
unlikely subject's as the origin of the cuneiform character. The
possession of a brick from Babylon set him a thinking. How had it been
manufactured? Its under side was clearly marked by the sedges of the
Euphrates upon which it had been laid to dry and bake in the sun. But
how about those curious cuneiform characters? How had writing assumed
so remarkable a form? His surmise was this: that the brickmakers, in
telling their tale of bricks, used the triangular corner of another
brick, and by pressing it down upon the soft clay, left behind it the
triangular mark which the cuneiform character exhibits. Such marks
repeated, and placed in different relations to each other, would
readily represent any number. From the use of the corner of a brick in
writing, the transition was easy to a pointed stick with a triangular
end, by the use of which all the cuneiform characters can readily be
produced upon the soft clay. This curious question formed the subject
of an interesting paper read by Mr. Nasmyth before the British
Association at Cheltenham.
But the most engrossing of Mr. Nasmyth's later pursuits has been the
science of astronomy, in which, by bringing a fresh, original mind to
the observation of celestial phenomena, he has succeeded in making some
of the most remarkable discoveries of our time. Astronomy was one of
his favourite pursuits at Patricroft, and on his retirement became his
serious study. By repeated observations with a powerful reflecting
telescope of his own construction, he succeeded in making a very
careful and minute painting of the craters, cracks, mountains, and
valleys in the moon's surface, for which a Council Medal was awarded
him at the Great Exhibition of 1851. But the most striking discovery
which he has made by means of big telescope--the result of patient,
continuous, and energetic observation--has been that of the nature of
the sun's surface, and the character of the extraordinary light-giving
bodies, apparently possessed of voluntary motion, moving across it,
sometimes forming spots or hollows of more than a hundred thousand
miles in diameter.
The results of these observations were of so novel a character that
astronomers for some time hesitated to receive them as facts.[6] Yet
so eminent an astronomer as Sir John Herschel does not hesitate now to
describe them as "a most wonderful discovery." "According to Mr.
Nasmyth's observations," says he, "made with a very fine telescope of
his own making, the bright surface of the sun consists of separate,
insulated, individual objects or things, all nearly or exactly of one
certain definite size and shape, which is more like that of a willow
leaf, as he describes them, than anything else. These leaves or scales
are not arranged in any order (as those on a butterfly's wing are), but
lie crossing one another in all directions, like what are called spills
in the game of spillikins; except at the borders of a spot, where they
point for the most part inwards towards the middle of the spot,[7]
presenting much the sort of appearance that the small leaves of some
water-plants or sea-weeds do at the edge of a deep hole of clear water.
The exceedingly definite shape of these objects, their exact similarity
one to another, and the way in which they lie across and athwart each
other (except where they form a sort of bridge across a spot, in which
case they seem to affect a common direction, that, namely, of the
bridge itself),--all these characters seem quite repugnant to the
notion of their being of a vaporous, a cloudy, or a fluid nature.
Nothing remains but to consider them as separate and independent
sheets, flakes, or scales, having some sort of solidity. And these
flakes, be they what they may, and whatever may be said about the
dashing of meteoric stones into the sun's atmosphere, &c., are
evidently THE IMMEDIATE SOURCES OF THE SOLAR LIGHT AND HEAT, by
whatever mechanism or whatever processes they may be enabled to
develope and, as it were, elaborate these elements from the bosom of
the non-luminous fluid in which they appear to float. Looked at in
this point of view, we cannot refuse to regard them as organisms of
some peculiar and amazing kind; and though it would be too daring to
speak of such organization as partaking of the nature of life, yet we
do know that vital action is competent to develop heat and light, as
well as electricity. These wonderful objects have been seen by others
as well as Mr. Nasmyth, so that them is no room to doubt of their
reality." [8]
Such is the marvellous discovery made by the inventor of the
steam-hammer, as described by the most distinguished astronomer of the
age. A writer in the Edinburgh Review, referring to the subject in a
recent number, says it shows him "to possess an intellect as profound
as it is expert." Doubtless his training as a mechanic, his habits of
close observation and his ready inventiveness, which conferred so much
power on him as an engineer, proved of equal advantage to him when
labouring in the domain of physical science. Bringing a fresh mind, of
keen perception, to his new studies, and uninfluenced by preconceived
opinions, he saw them in new and original lights; and hence the
extraordinary discovery above described by Sir John Herschel.
Some two hundred years since, a member of the Nasmyth family, Jean
Nasmyth of Hamilton, was burnt for a witch--one of the last martyrs to
ignorance and superstition in Scotland--because she read her Bible with
two pairs of spectacles. Had Mr. Nasmyth himself lived then, he might,
with his two telescopes of his own making, which bring the sun and moon
into his chamber for him to examine and paint, have been taken for a
sorcerer. But fortunately for him, and still more so for us, Mr.
Nasmyth stands before the public of this age as not only one of its
ablest mechanics, but as one of the most accomplished and original of
scientific observers.
[1] Originally prepared for John Hick, Esq., C.E., of Bolton, and
embodied by him in his lectures on "Self Help," delivered before the
Holy Trinity Working Men's Association of that town, on the 18th and
20th March, 1862; the account having been kindly corrected by Mr.
Nasmyth for the present publication.
[2] Most of the tools with which he began business in Manchester were
made by his own hands in his father's little workshop at Edinburgh, He
was on one occasion "hard up" for brass with which to make a wheel for
his planing machine. There was a row of old-fashioned brass
candlesticks standing in bright array on the kitchen mantelpiece which
he greatly coveted for the purpose. His father was reluctant to give
them up; "for," said he, "I have had many a crack with Burns when these
candlesticks were on the table." But his mother at length yielded;
when the candlesticks were at once recast, and made into the wheel of
the planing machine, which is still at work in Manchester.
[3] Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts, ii. 739.
[4] Matsys' beautiful wrought-iron well cover, still standing in front
of the cathedral at Antwerp, and Rukers's steel or iron chair exhibited
at South Kensington in 1862, are examples of the beautiful hammer work
turned out by the artisans of the middle ages. The railings of the
tombs of Henry VII. and Queen Eleanor in Westminster Abbey, the hinges
and iron work of Lincoln Cathedral, of St. George's Chapel at Windsor,
and of some of the Oxford colleges, afford equally striking
illustrations of the skill of our English blacksmiths several centuries
ago.
[5] Mr. Nasmyth has lately introduced, with the assistance of Mr.
Wilson of the Low Moor Iron Works, a new, exceedingly ingenious, and
very simple contrivance for working the hammer. By this application
any length of stroke, any amount of blow, and any amount of variation
can be given by the operation of a single lever; and by this
improvement the machine has attained a rapidity of action and change of
motion suitable to the powers of the engine, and the form or
consistency of the articles under the hammer.--Mr. FAIRBAIRN'S Report
on the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855, p. 100.
[6] See Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Manchester, 3rd series, vol. 1. 407.
[7] Sir John Herschel adds, "Spots of not very irregular, and what may
be called compact form, covering an area of between seven and eight
hundred millions of square miles, are by no means uncommon. One spot
which I measured in the year 1837 occupied no less than three thousand
seven hundred and eighty millions, taking in all the irregularities of
its form; and the black space or nucleus in the middle of one very
nearly round one would have allowed the earth to drop through it,
leaving a thousand clear miles on either side; and many instances of
much larger spots than these are on record."
[8] SIR JOHN HERSCHEL in Good Words for April, 1863.
CHAPTER XVI.
WILLIAM FAIRBAIRN.
"In science there is work for all hands, more or less skilled; and he
is usually the most fit to occupy the higher posts who has risen from
the ranks, and has experimentally acquainted himself with the nature of
the work to be done in each and every, even the humblest department."
J. D. Forbes.
The development of the mechanical industry of England has been so
rapid, especially as regards the wonders achieved by the machine-tools
above referred to, that it may almost be said to have been accomplished
within the life of the present generation. "When I first entered this
city," said Mr. Fairbairn, in his inaugural address as President of the
British Association at Manchester in 1861, "the whole of the machinery
was executed by hand. There were neither planing, slotting, nor
shaping machines; and, with the exception of very imperfect lathes and
a few drills, the preparatory operations of construction were effected
entirely by the hands of the workmen. Now, everything is done by
machine-tools with a degree of accuracy which the unaided hand could
never accomplish. The automaton or self-acting machine-tool has within
itself an almost creative power; in fact, so great are its powers of
adaptation, that there is no operation of the human hand that it does
not imitate." In a letter to the author, Mr. Fairbairn says, "The
great pioneers of machine-tool-making were Maudslay, Murray of Leeds,
Clement and Fox of Derby, who were ably followed by Nasmyth, Roberts,
and Whitworth, of Manchester, and Sir Peter Fairbairn of Leeds; and Mr.
Fairbairn might well have added, by himself,--for he has been one of
the most influential and successful of mechanical engineers.
William Fairbairn was born at Kelso on the 19th of February, 1787. His
parents occupied a humble but respectable position in life. His
father, Andrew Fairbairn, was the son of a gardener in the employment
of Mr. Baillie of Mellerston, and lived at Smailholm, a village lying a
few miles west of Kelso. Tracing the Fairbairns still further back, we
find several of them occupying the station of "portioners," or small
lairds, at Earlston on the Tweed, where the family had been settled
since the days of the Solemn League and Covenant. By his mother's
side, the subject of our memoir is supposed to be descended from the
ancient Border family of Douglas.
While Andrew Fairbairn (William's father) lived at Smailholm, Walter
Scott was living with his grandmother in Smailholm or Sandyknowe Tower,
whither he had been sent from Edinburgh in the hope that change of air
would help the cure of his diseased hip-joint; and Andrew, being nine
years his senior, and a strong youth for his age, was accustomed to
carry the little patient about in his arms, until he was able to walk
by himself. At a later period, when Miss Scott, Walter's aunt, removed
from Smailholm to Kelso, the intercourse between the families was
renewed. Scott was then an Edinburgh advocate, engaged in collecting
materials for his Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border, or, as his aunt
described his pursuit, "running after the auld wives of the country
gatherin' havers." He used frequently to read over by the fireside in
the evening the results of his curious industry, which, however, were
not very greatly appreciated by his nearest relatives; and they did not
scruple to declare that for the "Advocate" to go about collecting
"ballants" was mere waste of time as well as money.
William Fairbairn's first schoolmaster was a decrepit old man who went
by the name of "Bowed Johnnie Ker,"--a Cameronian, with a nasal twang,
which his pupils learnt much more readily than they did his lessons in
reading and arithmetic, notwithstanding a liberal use of "the tawse."
Yet Johnnie had a taste for music, and taught his pupils to SING their
reading lessons, which was reckoned quite a novelty in education.
After a short time our scholar was transferred to the parish-school of
the town, kept by a Mr. White, where he was placed under the charge of
a rather severe helper, who, instead of the tawse, administered
discipline by means of his knuckles, hard as horn, which he applied
with a peculiar jerk to the crania of his pupils. At this school
Willie Fairbairn lost the greater part of the singing accomplishments
which he had acquired under "Bowed Johnnie," but he learnt in lieu of
them to read from Scott and Barrow's collections of prose and poetry,
while he obtained some knowledge of arithmetic, in which he proceeded
as far as practice and the rule of three. This constituted his whole
stock of school-learning up to his tenth year. Out of school-hours he
learnt to climb the ruined walls of the old abbey of the town, and
there was scarcely an arch, or tower, or cranny of it with which he did
not become familiar.
When in his twelfth year, his father, who had been brought up to
farm-work, and possessed considerable practical knowledge of
agriculture, was offered the charge of a farm at Moy in Ross-shire,
belonging to Lord Seaforth of Brahan Castle. The farm was of about 300
acres, situated on the banks of the river Conan, some five miles from
the town of Dingwall. The family travelled thither in a covered cart,
a distance of 200 miles, through a very wild and hilly country,
arriving at their destination at the end of October, 1799. The farm,
when reached, was found overgrown with whins and brushwood, and covered
in many places with great stones and rocks; it was, in short, as nearly
in a state of nature as it was possible to be. The house intended for
the farmer's reception was not finished, and Andrew Fairbairn, with his
wife and five children, had to take temporary refuge in a miserable
hovel, very unlike the comfortable house which they had quitted at
Kelso. By next spring, however, the new house was ready; and Andrew
Fairbairn set vigorously to work at the reclamation of the land. After
about two years' labours it exhibited an altogether different
appearance, and in place of whins and stones there were to be seen
heavy crops of barley and turnips. The barren years of 1800 and 1801,
however, pressed very hardly on Andrew Fairbairn as on every other
farmer of arable land. About that time, Andrew's brother Peter, who
acted as secretary to Lord Seaforth, and through whose influence the
former had obtained the farm, left Brahan Castle for the West Indies
with his Lordship, who--notwithstanding his being both deaf and
dumb--had been appointed to the Governorship of Barbadoes; and in
consequence of various difficulties which occurred shortly after his
leaving, Andrew Fairbairn found it necessary to give up his holding,
whereupon he engaged as steward to Mackenzie of Allengrange, with whom
he remained for two years.
While the family lived at Moy, none of the boys were put to school.
They could not be spared from the farm and the household. Those of
them that could not work afield were wanted to help to nurse the
younger children at home. But Andrew Fairbairn possessed a great
treasure in his wife, who was a woman of much energy of character,
setting before her children an example of patient industry, thrift,
discreetness, and piety, which could not fail to exercise a powerful
influence upon them in after-life; and this, of itself, was an
education which probably far more than compensated for the boys' loss
of school-culture during their life at Moy. Mrs. Fairbairn span and
made all the children's clothes, as well as the blankets and sheeting;
and, while in the Highlands, she not only made her own and her
daughters' dresses, and her sons' jackets and trowsers, but her
husband's coats and waistcoats; besides helping her neighbours to cut
out their clothing for family wear.
One of William's duties at home was to nurse his younger brother Peter,
then a delicate child under two years old; and to relieve himself of
the labour of carrying him about, he began the construction of a little
waggon in which to wheel him. This was, however, a work of some
difficulty, as all the tools he possessed were only a knife, a gimlet,
and an old saw. With these implements, a piece of thin board, and a
few nails, he nevertheless contrived to make a tolerably serviceable
waggon-body. His chief difficulty consisted in making the wheels,
which he contrived to surmount by cutting sections from the stem of a
small alder-tree, and with a red-hot poker he bored the requisite holes
in their centres to receive the axle. The waggon was then mounted on
its four wheels, and to the great joy of its maker was found to answer
its purpose admirably. In it he wheeled his little brother--afterwards
well known as Sir Peter Fairbairn, mayor of Leeds--in various
directions about the farm, and sometimes to a considerable distance
from it; and the vehicle was regarded on the whole as a decided
success. His father encouraged him in his little feats of construction
of a similar kind, and he proceeded to make and rig miniature boats and
ships, and then miniature wind and water mills, in which last art he
acquired such expertness that he had sometimes five or six mills going
at a time. The machinery was all made with a knife, the water-spouts
being formed by the bark of a tree, and the millstones represented by
round discs of the same material. Such were the first constructive
efforts of the future millwright and engineer.
When the family removed to Allengrange in 1801, the boys were sent to
school at Munlachy, about a mile and a half distant from the farm. The
school was attended by about forty barefooted boys in tartan kilt's,
and about twenty girls, all of the poorer class. The schoolmaster was
one Donald Frazer, a good teacher, but a severe disciplinarian. Under
him, William made some progress in reading, writing, and arithmetic;
and though he himself has often lamented the meagreness of his school
instruction, it is clear, from what he has since been enabled to
accomplish, that these early lessons were enough at all events to set
him fairly on the road of self-culture, and proved the fruitful seed of
much valuable intellectual labour, as well as of many excellent
practical books.
After two years' trial of his new situation, which was by no means
satisfactory, Andrew Fairbairn determined again to remove southward
with his family; and, selling off everything, they set sail from
Cromarty for Leith in June, 1803. Having seen his wife and children
temporarily settled at Kelso, he looked out for a situation, and
shortly after proceeded to undertake the management of Sir William
Ingleby's farm at Ripley in Yorkshire. Meanwhile William was placed
for three months under the charge of his uncle William, the parish
schoolmaster of Galashiels, for the purpose of receiving instruction in
book-keeping and land-surveying, from which he derived considerable
benefit. He could not, however, remain longer at school; for being of
the age of fourteen, it was thought necessary that he should be set to
work without further delay. His first employment was on the fine new
bridge at Kelso, then in course of construction after the designs of
Mr. Rennie; but in helping one day to carry a handbarrow-load of stone,
his strength proving insufficient, he gave way under it, and the stones
fell upon him, one of them inflicting a serious wound on his leg, which
kept him a cripple for months. In the mean time his father, being
dissatisfied with his prospects at Ripley, accepted the appointment of
manager of the Percy Main Colliery Company's farm in the neighbourhood
of Newcastle-on-Tyne, whither he proceeded with his family towards the
end of 1803, William joining them in the following February, when the
wound in his leg had sufficiently healed to enable him to travel.
Percy Main is situated within two miles of North Shields, and is one of
the largest collieries in that district. William was immediately set
to work at the colliery, his first employment being to lead coals from
behind the screen to the pitmen's houses. His Scotch accent, and
perhaps his awkwardness, exposed him to much annoyance from the "pit
lads," who were a very rough and profligate set; and as boxing was a
favourite pastime among them, our youth had to fight his way to their
respect, passing through a campaign of no less than seventeen pitched
battles. He was several times on the point of abandoning the work
altogether, rather than undergo the buffetings and insults to which he
was almost a daily martyr, when a protracted contest with one of the
noted boxers of the colliery, in which he proved the victor, at length
relieved him from further persecution.
In the following year, at the age of sixteen, he was articled as an
engineer for five years to the owners of Percy Main, and was placed
under the charge of Mr. Robinson, the engine-wright of the colliery.
His wages as apprentice were 8s. a week; but by working over-hours,
making wooden wedges used in pit-work, and blocking out segments of
solid oak required for walling the sides of the mine, he considerably
increased his earnings, which enabled him to add to the gross income of
the family, who were still struggling with the difficulties of small
means and increasing expenses. When not engaged upon over-work in the
evenings, he occupied himself in self-education. He drew up a scheme
of daily study with this object, to which he endeavoured to adhere as
closely as possible,--devoting the evenings of Mondays to mensuration
and arithmetic; Tuesdays to history and poetry; Wednesdays to
recreation, novels, and romances; Thursdays to algebra and mathematics;
Fridays to Euclid and trigonometry; Saturdays to recreation; and
Sundays to church, Milton, and recreation. He was enabled to extend
the range of his reading by the help of the North Shields Subscription
Library, to which his father entered him a subscriber. Portions of his
spare time were also occasionally devoted to mechanical construction,
in which he cultivated the useful art of handling tools. One of his
first attempts was the contrivance of a piece of machinery worked by a
weight and a pendulum, that should at the same time serve for a
timepiece and an orrery; but his want of means, as well as of time,
prevented him prosecuting this contrivance to completion. He was more
successful with the construction of a fiddle, on which he was ambitious
to become a performer. It must have been a tolerable instrument, for a
professional player offered him 20s. for it. But though he succeeded
in making a fiddle, and for some time persevered in the attempt to play
upon it, he did not succeed in producing any satisfactory melody, and
at length gave up the attempt, convinced that nature had not intended
him for a musician.[1]
In due course of time our young engineer was removed from the workshop,
and appointed to take charge of the pumps of the mine and the
steam-engine by which they were kept in work. This employment was more
to his taste, gave him better "insight," and afforded him greater
opportunities for improvement. The work was, however, very trying, and
at times severe, especially in winter, the engineer being liable to be
drenched with water every time that he descended the shaft to regulate
the working of the pumps; but, thanks to a stout constitution, he bore
through these exposures without injury, though others sank under them.
At this period he had the advantage of occasional days of leisure, to
which he was entitled by reason of his nightwork; and during such
leisure he usually applied himself to reading and study.
It was about this time that William Fairbairn made the acquaintance of
George Stephenson, while the latter was employed in working the
ballast-engine at Willington Quay. He greatly admired George as a
workman, and was accustomed in the summer evenings to go over to the
Quay occasionally and take charge of George's engine, to enable him to
earn a few shillings extra by heaving ballast out of the collier
vessels. Stephenson's zeal in the pursuit of mechanical knowledge
probably was not without its influence in stimulating William Fairbairn
himself to carry on so diligently the work of self-culture. But little
could the latter have dreamt, while serving his apprenticeship at Percy
Main, that his friend George Stephenson, the brakesman, should yet be
recognised as among the greatest engineers of his age, and that he
himself should have the opportunity, in his capacity of President of
the Institute of Mechanical Engineers at Newcastle, of making public
acknowledgment of the opportunities for education which he had enjoyed
in that neighbourhood in his early years.[2]
Having finished his five years' apprenticeship at Percy Main, by which
time he had reached his twenty-first year, William Fairbairn shortly
after determined to go forth into the world in search of experience.
At Newcastle he found employment as a millwright for a few weeks,
during which he worked at the erection of a sawmill in the Close. From
thence he went to Bedlington at an advanced wage. He remained there
for six months, during which he was so fortunate as to make the
acquaintance of Miss Mar, who five years after, when his wanderings had
ceased, became his wife. On the completion of the job on which he had
been employed, our engineer prepared to make another change. Work was
difficult to be had in the North, and, joined by a comrade, he resolved
to try his fortune in London. Adopting the cheapest route, he took
passage by a Shields collier, in which he sailed for the Thames on the
11th of December, 1811. It was then war-time, and the vessel was very
short-handed, the crew consisting only of three old men and three boys,
with the skipper and mate; so that the vessel was no sooner fairly at
sea than both the passenger youths had to lend a hand in working her,
and this continued for the greater part of the voyage. The weather was
very rough, and in consequence of the captain's anxiety to avoid
privateers he hugged the shore too close, and when navigating the
inside passage of the Swin, between Yarmouth and the Nore, the vessel
very narrowly escaped shipwreck. After beating about along shore, the
captain half drunk the greater part of the time, the vessel at last
reached the Thames with loss of spars and an anchor, after a tedious
voyage of fourteen days.
On arriving off Blackwall the captain went ashore ostensibly in search
of the Coal Exchange, taking our young engineer with him. The former
was still under the influence of drink; and though he failed to reach
the Exchange that night, he succeeded in reaching a public house in
Wapping, beyond which he could not be got. At ten o'clock the two
started on their return to the ship; but the captain took the
opportunity of the darkness to separate from his companion, and did not
reach the ship until next morning. It afterwards came out that he had
been taken up and lodged in the watch-house. The youth, left alone in
the streets of the strange city, felt himself in an awkward dilemma.
He asked the next watchman he met to recommend him to a lodging, on
which the man took him to a house in New Gravel Lane, where he
succeeded in finding accommodation. What was his horror next morning
to learn that a whole family--the Williamsons--had been murdered in the
very next house during the night! Making the best of his way back to
the ship, he found that his comrade, who had suffered dreadfully from
sea-sickness during the voyage, had nearly recovered, and was able to
accompany him into the City in search of work. They had between them a
sum of only about eight pounds, so that it was necessary for them to
take immediate steps to obtain employment.
They thought themselves fortunate in getting the promise of a job from
Mr. Rennie, the celebrated engineer, whose works were situated at the
south end of Blackfriars Bridge. Mr. Rennie sent the two young men to
his foreman, with the request that he should set them to work. The
foreman referred them to the secretary of the Millwrights' Society, the
shop being filled with Union men, who set their shoulders together to
exclude those of their own grade, however skilled, who could not
produce evidence that they had complied with the rules of the trade.
Describing his first experience of London Unionists, nearly half a
century later, before an assembly of working men at Derby, Mr.
Fairbairn said, "When I first entered London, a young man from the
country had no chance whatever of success, in consequence of the trade
guilds and unions. I had no difficulty in finding employment, but
before I could begin work I had to run the gauntlet of the trade
societies; and after dancing attendance for nearly six weeks, with very
little money in my pocket, and having to 'box Harry' all the time, I
was ultimately declared illegitimate, and sent adrift to seek my
fortune elsewhere. There were then three millwright societies in
London: one called the Old Society, another the New Society, and a
third the Independent Society. These societies were not founded for
the protection of the trade, but for the maintenance of high wages, and
for the exclusion of all those who could not assert their claims to
work in London and other corporate towns. Laws of a most arbitrary
character were enforced, and they were governed by cliques of
self-appointed officers, who never failed to take care of their own
interests." [3]
Their first application for leave to work in London having thus
disastrously ended, the two youths determined to try their fortune in
the country, and with aching hearts they started next morning before
daylight. Their hopes had been suddenly crushed, their slender funds
were nearly exhausted, and they scarce knew where to turn. But they
set their faces bravely northward, and pushed along the high road,
through slush and snow, as far as Hertford, which they reached after
nearly eight hours' walking, on the moderate fare during their journey
of a penny roll and a pint of ale each. Though wet to the skin, they
immediately sought out a master millwright, and applied for work. He
said he had no job vacant at present; but, seeing their sorry plight,
he had compassion upon them, and said, "Though I cannot give you
employment, you seem to be two nice lads;" and he concluded by offering
Fairbairn a half-crown. But his proud spirit revolted at taking money
which he had not earned; and he declined the proffered gift with
thanks, saying he was sorry they could not have work. He then turned
away from the door, on which his companion, mortified by his refusal to
accept the half-crown at a time when they were reduced almost to their
last penny, broke out in bitter remonstrances and regrets. Weary, wet,
and disheartened, the two turned into Hertford churchyard, and rested
for a while upon a tombstone, Fairbairn's companion relieving himself
by a good cry, and occasional angry outbursts of "Why didn't you take
the half-crown?" "Come, come, man!" said Fairbairn, "it's of no use
crying; cheer up; let's try another road; something must soon cast up."
They rose, and set out again, but when they reached the bridge, the
dispirited youth again broke down; and, leaning his back against the
parapet, said, "I winna gang a bit further; let's get back to London."
Against this Fairbairn remonstrated, saying "It's of no use lamenting;
we must try what we can do here; if the worst comes to the worst, we
can 'list; you are a strong chap--they'll soon take you; and as for me,
I'll join too; I think I could fight a bit." After this council of
war, the pair determined to find lodgings in the town for the night,
and begin their search for work anew on the morrow.
Next day, when passing along one of the back streets of Hertford, they
came to a wheelwright's shop, where they made the usual enquiries. The
wheelwright, said that he did not think there was any job to be had in
the town; but if the two young men pushed on to Cheshunt, he thought
they might find work at a windmill which was under contract to be
finished in three weeks, and where the millwright wanted hands. Here
was a glimpse of hope at last; and the strength and spirits of both
revived in an instant. They set out immediately; walked the seven
miles to Cheshunt; succeeded in obtaining the expected employment;
worked at the job a fortnight; and entered London again with nearly
three pounds in their pockets.
Our young millwright at length succeeded in obtaining regular
employment in the metropolis at good wages. He worked first at
Grundy's Patent Ropery at Shadwell, and afterwards at Mr. Penn's of
Greenwich, gaining much valuable insight, and sedulously improving his
mind by study in his leisure hours. Among the acquaintances he then
made was an enthusiastic projector of the name of Hall, who had taken
out one patent for making hemp from bean-stalks, and contemplated
taking out another for effecting spade tillage by steam. The young
engineer was invited to make the requisite model, which he did, and it
cost him both time and money, which the out-at-elbows projector was
unable to repay; and all that came of the project was the exhibition of
the model at the Society of Arts and before the Board of Agriculture,
in whose collection it is probably still to be found. Another more
successful machine constructed By Mr. Fairbairn about the same time was
a sausage-chopping machine, which he contrived and made for a
pork-butcher for 33l. It was the first order he had ever had on his
own account; and, as the machine when made did its work admirably, he
was naturally very proud of it. The machine was provided with a
fly-wheel and double crank, with connecting rods which worked a cross
head. It contained a dozen knives crossing each other at right angles
in such a way as to enable them to mince or divide the meat on a
revolving block. Another part of the apparatus accomplished the
filling of the sausages in a very expert manner, to the entire
satisfaction of the pork-butcher.
As work was scarce in London at the time, and our engineer was bent on
gathering further experience in his trade, he determined to make a tour
in the South of England and South Wales; and set out from London in
April 1813 with 7L. in his pocket. After visiting Bath and Frome, he
settled to work for six weeks at Bathgate; after which he travelled by
Bradford and Trowbridge--always on foot--to Bristol. From thence he
travelled through South Wales, spending a few days each at Newport,
Llandaff, and Cardiff, where he took ship for Dublin. By the time he
reached Ireland his means were all but exhausted, only three-halfpence
remaining in his pocket; but, being young, hopeful, skilful, and
industrious, he was light of heart, and looked cheerfully forward. The
next day he succeeded in finding employment at Mr. Robinson's, of the
Phoenix Foundry, where he was put to work at once upon a set of
patterns for some nail-machinery. Mr. Robinson was a man of spirit and
enterprise, and, seeing the quantities of English machine-made nails
imported into Ireland, he was desirous of giving Irish industry the
benefit of the manufacture. The construction of the nail-making
machinery occupied Mr. Fairbairn the entire summer; and on its
completion he set sail in the month of October for Liverpool. It may
be added, that, notwithstanding the expense incurred by Mr. Robinson in
setting up the new nail-machinery, his workmen threatened him with a
strike if he ventured to use it. As he could not brave the opposition
of the Unionists, then all-powerful in Dublin, the machinery was never
set to work; the nail-making trade left Ireland, never to return; and
the Irish market was thenceforward supplied entirely with English-made
nails. The Dublin iron-manufacture was ruined in the same way; not
through any local disadvantages, but solely by the prohibitory
regulations enforced by the workmen of the Trades Unions.
Arrived at Liverpool, after a voyage of two days--which was then
considered a fair passage--our engineer proceeded to Manchester, which
had already become the principal centre of manufacturing operations in
the North of England. As we have already seen in the memoirs of
Nasmyth, Roberts, and Whitworth, Manchester offered great attractions
for highly-skilled mechanics; and it was as fortunate for Manchester as
for William Fairbairn himself that he settled down there as a working
millwright in the year 1814, bringing with him no capital, but an
abundance of energy, skill, and practical experience in his trade.
Afterwards describing the characteristics of the millwright of that
time, Mr. Fairbairn said--"In those days a good millwright was a man of
large resources; he was generally well educated, and could draw out his
own designs and work at the lathe; he had a knowledge of mill
machinery, pumps, and cranes, and could turn his hand to the bench or
the forge with equal adroitness and facility. If hard pressed, as was
frequently the case in country places far from towns, he could devise
for himself expedients which enabled him to meet special requirements,
and to complete his work without assistance. This was the class of men
with whom I associated in early life--proud of their calling, fertile
in resources, and aware of their value in a country where the
industrial arts were rapidly developing." [4]
When William Fairbairn entered Manchester he was twenty-four years of
age; and his hat still "covered his family." But, being now pretty
well satiated with his "wandetschaft,"--as German tradesmen term their
stage of travelling in search of trade experience,--he desired to
settle, and, if fortune favoured him, to marry the object of his
affections, to whom his heart still faithfully turned during all his
wanderings. He succeeded in finding employment with Mr. Adam
Parkinson, remaining with him for two years, working as a millwright,
at good wages. Out of his earnings he saved sufficient to furnish a
two-roomed cottage comfortably; and there we find him fairly installed
with his wife by the end of 1816. As in the case of most men of a
thoughtful turn, marriage served not only to settle our engineer, but
to stimulate him to more energetic action. He now began to aim at
taking a higher position, and entertained the ambition of beginning
business on his own account. One of his first efforts in this
direction was the preparation of the design of a cast-iron bridge over
the Irwell, at Blackfriars, for which a prize was offered. The attempt
was unsuccessful, and a stone bridge was eventually decided on; but the
effort made was creditable, and proved the beginning of many designs.
The first job he executed on his own account was the erection of an
iron conservatory and hothouse for Mr. J. Hulme, of Clayton, near
Manchester; and he induced one of his shopmates, James Lillie, to join
him in the undertaking. This proved the beginning of a business
connection which lasted for a period of fifteen years, and laid the
foundation of a partnership, the reputation of which, in connection
with mill-work and the construction of iron machinery generally,
eventually became known all over the civilized world.
Although the patterns for the conservatory were all made, and the
castings were begun, the work was not proceeded with, in consequence of
the notice given by a Birmingham firm that the plan after which it was
proposed to construct it was an infringement of their patent. The
young firm were consequently under the necessity of looking about them
for other employment. And to be prepared for executing orders, they
proceeded in the year 1817 to hire a small shed at a rent of 12s. a
week, in which they set up a lathe of their own making, capable of
turning shafts of from 3 to 6 inches diameter; and they hired a strong
Irishman to drive the wheel and assist at the heavy work. Their first
job was the erection of a cullender, and their next a calico-polishing
machine; but orders came in slowly, and James Lillie began to despair
of success. His more hopeful partner strenuously urged him to
perseverance, and so buoyed him up with hopes of orders, that he
determined to go on a little longer. They then issued cards among the
manufacturers, and made a tour of the principal firms, offering their
services and soliciting work.
Amongst others, Mr. Fairbairn called upon the Messrs. Adam and George
Murray, the large cotton-spinners, taking with him the designs of his
iron bridge. Mr. Adam Murray received him kindly, heard his
explanations, and invited him to call on the following day with his
partner. The manufacturer must have been favourably impressed by this
interview, for next day, when Fairbairn and Lillie called, he took them
over his mill, and asked whether they felt themselves competent to
renew with horizontal cross-shafts the whole of the work by which the
mule-spinning machinery was turned. This was a formidable enterprise
for a young firm without capital and almost without plant to undertake;
but they had confidence in themselves, and boldly replied that they
were willing and able to execute the work. On this, Mr. Murray said he
would call and see them at their own workshop, to satisfy himself that
they possessed the means of undertaking such an order. This proposal
was by no means encouraging to the partners, who feared that when Mr.
Murray spied "the nakedness of the land" in that quarter, he might
repent him of his generous intentions. He paid his promised visit, and
it is probable that he was more favourably impressed by the individual
merits of the partners than by the excellence of their
machine-tools--of which they had only one, the lathe which they had
just made and set up; nevertheless he gave them the order, and they
began with glad hearts and willing hands and minds to execute this
their first contract. It may be sufficient to state that by working
late and early--from 5 in the morning until 9 at night for a
considerable period--they succeeded in completing the alterations
within the time specified, and to Mr. Murray's entire satisfaction.
The practical skill of the young men being thus proved, and their
anxiety to execute the work entrusted to them to the best of their
ability having excited the admiration of their employer, he took the
opportunity of recommending them to his friends in the trade, and
amongst others to Mr. John Kennedy, of the firm of MacConnel and
Kennedy, then the largest spinners in the kingdom.
The Cotton Trade had by this time sprung into great importance, and was
increasing with extraordinary rapidity. Population and wealth were
pouring into South Lancashire, and industry and enterprise were
everywhere on foot. The foundations were being laid of a system of
manufacturing in iron, machinery, and textile fabrics of nearly all
kinds, the like of which has perhaps never been surpassed in any
country. It was a race of industry, in which the prizes were won by
the swift, the strong, and the skilled. For the most part, the early
Lancashire manufacturers started very nearly equal in point of worldly
circumstances, men originally of the smallest means often coming to the
front--work men, weavers, mechanics, pedlers, farmers, or labourers--in
course of time rearing immense manufacturing concerns by sheer force of
industry, energy, and personal ability. The description given by one
of the largest employers in Lancashire, of the capital with which he
started, might apply to many of them: "When I married," said he, "my
wife had a spinning-wheel, and I had a loom--that was the beginning of
our fortune." As an illustration of the rapid rise of Manchester men
from small beginnings, the following outline of John Kennedy's career,
intimately connected as he was with the subject of our memoir--may not
be without interest in this place.
John Kennedy was one of five young men of nearly the same age, who came
from the same neighbourhood in Scotland, and eventually settled in
Manchester as cottons-pinners about the end of last century. The
others were his brother James, his partner James MacConnel, and the
brothers Murray, above referred to--Mr. Fairbairn's first extensive
employers. John Kennedy's parents were respectable peasants, possessed
of a little bit of ground at Knocknalling, in the stewartry of
Kirkcudbright, on which they contrived to live, and that was all. John
was one of a family of five sons and two daughters, and the father
dying early, the responsibility and the toil of bringing up these
children devolved upon the mother. She was a strict disciplinarian,
and early impressed upon the minds of her boys that they had their own
way to make in the world. One of the first things she made them think
about was, the learning of some useful trade for the purpose of
securing an independent living; "for," said she, "if you have gotten
mechanical skill and intelligence, and are honest and trustworthy, you
will always find employment and be ready to avail yourselves of
opportunities for advancing yourselves in life." Though the mother
desired to give her sons the benefits of school education, there was
but little of that commodity to be had in the remote district of
Knocknalling. The parish-school was six miles distant, and the
teaching given in it was of a very inferior sort--usually administered
by students, probationers for the ministry, or by half-fledged
dominies, themselves more needing instruction than able to impart it.
The Kennedys could only attend the school during a few months in
summer-time, so that what they had acquired by the end of one season
was often forgotten by the beginning of the next. They learnt,
however, to read the Testament, say their catechism, and write their
own names.
As the children grew up, they each longed for the time to come when
they could be put to a trade. The family were poorly clad; stockings
and shoes were luxuries rarely indulged in; and Mr. Kennedy used in
after-life to tell his grandchildren of a certain Sunday which he
remembered shortly after his father died, when he was setting out for
Dalry church, and had borrowed his brother Alexander's stockings, his
brother ran after him and cried, "See that you keep out of the dirt,
for mind you have got my stockings on!" John indulged in many
day-dreams about the world that lay beyond the valley and the mountains
which surrounded the place of his birth. Though a mere boy, the
natural objects, eternally unchangeable, which daily met his eyes--the
profound silence of the scene, broken only by the bleating of a
solitary sheep, or the crowing of a distant cock, or the thrasher
beating out with his flail the scanty grain of the black oats spread
upon a skin in the open air, or the streamlets leaping from the rocky
clefts, or the distant church-bell sounding up the valley on
Sundays--all bred in his mind a profound melancholy and feeling of
loneliness, and he used to think to himself, "What can I do to see and
know something of the world beyond this?" The greatest pleasure he
experienced during that period was when packmen came round with their
stores of clothing and hardware, and displayed them for sale; he
eagerly listened to all that such visitors had to tell of the ongoings
of the world beyond the valley.
The people of the Knocknalling district were very poor. The greater
part of them were unable to support the younger members, whose custom
it was to move off elsewhere in search of a living when they arrived at
working years,--some to America, some to the West Indies, and some to
the manufacturing districts of the south. Whole families took their
departure in this way, and the few friendships which Kennedy formed
amongst those of his own age were thus suddenly snapped, and only a
great blank remained. But he too could follow their example, and enter
upon that wider world in which so many others had ventured and
succeeded. As early as eight years of age, his mother still impressing
upon her boys the necessity of learning to work, John gathered courage
to say to her that he wished to leave home and apprentice himself to
some handicraft business. Having seen some carpenters working in the
neighbourhood, with good clothes on their backs, and hearing the men's
characters well spoken of, he thought it would be a fine thing to be a
carpenter too, particularly as the occupation would enable him to move
from place to place and see the world. He was as yet, however, of too
tender an age to set out on the journey of life; but when he was about
eleven years old, Adam Murray, one of his most intimate acquaintances,
having gone off to serve an apprenticeship in Lancashire with Mr.
Cannan of Chowbent, himself a native of the district, the event again
awakened in him a strong desire to migrate from Knocknalling. Others
had gone after Murray, James MacConnel and two or three more; and at
length, at about fourteen years of age, Kennedy himself left his native
home for Lancashire. About the time that he set out, Paul Jones was
ravaging the coasts of Galloway, and producing general consternation
throughout the district. Great excitement also prevailed through the
occurrence of the Gordon riots in London, which extended into remote
country places; and Kennedy remembered being nearly frightened out of
his wits on one occasion by a poor dominie whose school he attended,
who preached to his boys about the horrors that were coming upon the
land through the introduction of Popery. The boy set out for England
on the 2nd of February, 1784, mounted upon a Galloway, his little
package of clothes and necessaries strapped behind him. As he passed
along the glen, recognising each familiar spot, his heart was in his
mouth, and he dared scarcely trust himself to look back. The ground
was covered with snow, and nature quite frozen up. He had the company
of his brother Alexander as far as the town of New Galloway, where he
slept the first night. The next day, accompanied by one of his future
masters, Mr. James Smith, a partner of Mr. Cannan's, who had originally
entered his service as a workman, they started on ponyback for
Dumfries. After a long day's ride, they entered the town in the
evening, and amongst the things which excited the boy's surprise were
the few street-lamps of the town, and a waggon with four horses and
four wheels. In his remote valley carts were as yet unknown, and even
in Dumfries itself they were comparative rarities; the common means of
transport in the district being what were called "tumbling cars." The
day after, they reached Longtown, and slept there; the boy noting
ANOTHER lamp. The next stage was to Carlisle, where Mr. Smith, whose
firm had supplied a carding engine and spinning-jenny to a small
manufacturer in the town, went to "gate" and trim them. One was put up
in a small house, the other in a small room; and the sight of these
machines was John Kennedy's first introduction to cotton-spinning.
While going up the inn-stairs he was amazed and not a little alarmed at
seeing two men in armour--he had heard of the battles between the Scots
and English--and believed these to be some of the fighting men; though
they proved to be but effigies. Five more days were occupied in
travelling southward, the resting places being at Penrith, Kendal,
Preston, and Chorley, the two travellers arriving at Chowbent on Sunday
the 8th of February, 1784. Mr. Cannan seems to have collected about
him a little colony of Scotsmen, mostly from the same neighbourhood,
and in the evening there was quite an assembly of them at the "Bear's
Paw," where Kennedy put up, to hear the tidings from their native
county brought by the last new comer. On the following morning the boy
began his apprenticeship as a carpenter with the firm of Cannan and
Smith, serving seven years for his meat and clothing. He applied
himself to his trade, and became a good, steady workman. He was
thoughtful and self-improving, always endeavouring to acquire knowledge
of new arts and to obtain insight into new machines. "Even in early
life," said he, in the account of his career addressed to his children,
"I felt a strong desire to know what others knew, and was always ready
to communicate what little I knew myself; and by admitting at once my
want of education, I found that I often made friends of those on whom I
had no claims beyond what an ardent desire for knowledge could give me."
His apprenticeship over, John Kennedy commenced business[5] in a small
way in Manchester in 1791, in conjunction with two other workmen,
Sandford and MacConnel. Their business was machine-making and
mule-spinning, Kennedy taking the direction of the machine department.
The firm at first put up their mules for spinning in any convenient
garrets they could hire at a low rental. After some time, they took
part of a small factory in Canal Street, and carried on their business
on a larger scale. Kennedy and MacConnel afterwards occupied a little
factory in the same street,--since removed to give place to Fairbairn's
large machine works. The progress of the firm was steady and even
rapid, and they went on building mills and extending their
business--Mr. Kennedy, as he advanced in life, gathering honour,
wealth, and troops of friends. Notwithstanding the defects of his
early education, he was one of the few men of his class who became
distinguished for his literary labours in connexion principally with
the cotton trade. Towards the close of his life, he prepared several
papers of great interest for the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Manchester, which are to be found printed in their Proceedings; one of
these, on the Invention of the Mule by Samuel Crompton, was for a long
time the only record which the public possessed of the merits and
claims of that distinguished inventor. His knowledge of the history of
the cotton manufacture in its various stages, and of mechanical
inventions generally, was most extensive and accurate. Among his
friends he numbered James Watt, who placed his son in his establishment
for the purpose of acquiring knowledge and experience of his
profession. At a much later period he numbered George Stephenson among
his friends, having been one of the first directors of the Liverpool
and Manchester Railway, and one of the three judges (selected because
of his sound judgment and proved impartiality, as well as his knowledge
of mechanical engineering) to adjudicate on the celebrated competition
of Locomotives at Rainhill. By these successive steps did this poor
Scotch boy become one of the leading men of Manchester, closing his
long and useful life in 1855 at an advanced age, his mental faculties
remaining clear and unclouded to the last. His departure from life was
happy and tranquil--so easy that it was for a time doubtful whether he
was dead or asleep.
To return to Mr. Fairbairn's career, and his progress as a millwright
and engineer in Manchester. When he and his partner undertook the
extensive alterations in Mr. Murray's factory, both were in a great
measure unacquainted with the working of cotton-mills, having until
then been occupied principally with corn-mills, and printing and
bleaching works; so that an entirely new field was now opened to their
united exertions. Sedulously improving their opportunities, the young
partners not only thoroughly mastered the practical details of
cotton-mill work, but they were very shortly enabled to introduce a
series of improvements of the greatest importance in this branch of our
national manufactures. Bringing their vigorous practical minds to bear
on the subject, they at once saw that the gearing of even the best
mills was of a very clumsy and imperfect character. They found the
machinery driven by large square cast-iron shafts, on which huge wooden
drums, some of them as much as four feet in diameter, revolved at the
rate of about forty revolutions a minute; and the couplings were so
badly fitted that they might be heard creaking and groaning a long way
off. The speeds of the driving-shafts were mostly got up by a series
of straps and counter drums, which not only crowded the rooms, but
seriously obstructed the light where most required for conducting the
delicate operations of the different machines. Another serious defect
lay in the construction of the shafts, and in the mode of fixing the
couplings, which were constantly giving way, so that a week seldom
passed without one or more breaks-down. The repairs were usually made
on Sundays, which were the millwrights' hardest working days, to their
own serious moral detriment; but when trade was good, every
consideration was made to give way to the uninterrupted running of the
mills during the rest of the week.
It occurred to Mr. Fairbairn that the defective arrangements thus
briefly described, might be remedied by the introduction of lighter
shafts driven at double or treble the velocity, smaller drums to drive
the machinery, and the use of wrought-iron wherever practicable,
because of its greater lightness and strength compared with wood. He
also provided for the simplification of the hangers and fixings by
which the shafting was supported, and introduced the "half-lap
coupling" so well known to millwrights and engineers. His partner
entered fully into his views; and the opportunity shortly presented
itself of carrying them into effect in the large new mill erected in
1818, for the firm of MacConnel and Kennedy. The machinery of that
concern proved a great improvement on all that had preceded it; and, to
Messrs. Fairbairn and Lillie's new system of gearing Mr. Kennedy added
an original invention of his own in a system of double speeds, with the
object of giving an increased quantity of twist in the finer
descriptions of mule yarn.
The satisfactory execution of this important work at once placed the
firm of Fairbairn and Lillie in the very front rank of engineering
millwrights. Mr. Kennedy's good word was of itself a passport to fame
and business, and as he was more than satisfied with the manner in
which his mill machinery had been planned and executed, he sounded
their praises in all quarters. Orders poured in upon them so rapidly,
that they had difficulty in keeping pace with the demands of the trade.
They then removed from their original shed to larger premises in
Matherstreet, where they erected additional lathes and other
tool-machines, and eventually a steam-engine. They afterwards added a
large cellar under an adjoining factory to their premises; and from
time to time provided new means of turning out work with increased
efficiency and despatch. In due course of time the firm erected a
factory of their own, fitted with the most improved machinery for
turning out millwork; and they went on from one contract to another,
until their reputation as engineers became widely celebrated. In
1826-7, they supplied the water-wheels for the extensive cotton-mills
belonging to Kirkman Finlay and Company, at Catrine Bank in Ayrshire.
These wheels are even at this day regarded as among the most perfect
hydraulic machines in Europe. About the same time they supplied the
mill gearing and water-machinery for Messrs. Escher and Company's large
works at Zurich, among the largest cotton manufactories on the
continent.
In the mean while the industry of Manchester and the neighbourhood,
through which the firm had risen and prospered, was not neglected, but
had the full benefit of the various improvements which they were
introducing in mill machinery. In the course of a few years an entire
revolution was effected in the gearing. Ponderous masses of timber and
cast-iron, with their enormous bearings and couplings, gave place to
slender rods of wrought-iron and light frames or hooks by which they
were suspended. In like manner, lighter yet stronger wheels and
pulleys were introduced, the whole arrangements were improved, and, the
workmanship being greatly more accurate, friction was avoided, while
the speed was increased from about 40 to upwards of 300 revolutions a
minute. The fly-wheel of the engine was also converted into a first
motion by the formation of teeth on its periphery, by which a
considerable saving was effected both in cost and power.
These great improvements formed quite an era in the history of mill
machinery; and exercised the most important influence on the
development of the cotton, flax, silk, and other branches of
manufacture. Mr. Fairbairn says the system introduced by his firm was
at first strongly condemned by leading engineers, and it was with
difficulty that he could overcome the force of their opposition; nor
was it until a wheel of thirty tons weight for a pair of engines of
100-horse power each was erected and set to work, that their
prognostications of failure entirely ceased. From that time the
principles introduced by Mr. Fairbairn have been adopted wherever steam
is employed as a motive power in mills.
Mr. Fairbairn and his partner had a hard uphill battle to fight while
these improvements were being introduced; but energy and perseverance,
guided by sound judgment, secured their usual reward, and the firm
became known as one of the most thriving and enterprising in
Manchester. Long years after, when addressing an assembly of working
men, Mr. Fairbairn, while urging the necessity of labour and
application as the only sure means of self-improvement, said, "I can
tell you from experience, that there is no labour so sweet, none so
consolatory, as that which is founded upon an honest, straightforward,
and honourable ambition." The history of any prosperous business,
however, so closely resembles every other, and its details are usually
of so monotonous a character, that it is unnecessary for us to pursue
this part of the subject; and we will content ourselves with briefly
indicating the several further improvements introduced by Mr. Fairbairn
in the mechanics of construction in the course of his long and useful
career.
His improvements in water-wheels were of great value, especially as
regarded the new form of bucket which he introduced with the object of
facilitating the escape of the air as the water entered the bucket
above, and its readmission as the water emptied itself out below. This
arrangement enabled the water to act upon the wheel with the maximum of
effect in all states of the river; and it so generally recommended
itself, that it very soon became adopted in most water-mills both at
home and abroad.[6] His labours were not, however, confined to his own
particular calling as a mill engineer, but were shortly directed to
other equally important branches of the constructive art. Thus he was
among the first to direct his attention to iron ship building as a
special branch of business. In 1829, Mr. Houston, of Johnstown, near
Paisley, launched a light boat on the Ardrossan Canal for the purpose
of ascertaining the speed at which it could be towed by horses with two
or three persons on board. To the surprise of Mr. Houston and the
other gentlemen present, it was found that the labour the horses had to
perform in towing the boat was mach greater at six or seven, than at
nine miles an hour. This anomaly was very puzzling to the
experimenters, and at the request of the Council of the Forth and Clyde
Canal, Mr. Fairbairn, who had already become extensively known as a
scientific mechanic, was requested to visit Scotland and institute a
series of experiments with light boats to determine the law of
traction, and clear up, if possible, the apparent anomalies in Mr.
Houston's experiments. This he did accordingly, and the results of his
experiments were afterwards published, The trials extended over a
series of years, and were conducted at a cost of several thousand
pounds. The first experiments were made with vessels of wood, but they
eventually led to the construction of iron vessels upon a large scale
and on an entirely new principle of construction, with angle iron ribs
and wrought-iron sheathing plates. The results proved most valuable,
and had the effect of specially directing the attention of naval
engineers to the employment of iron in ship building.
Mr. Fairbairn himself fully recognised the value of the experiments,
and proceeded to construct an iron vessel at his works at Manchester,
in 1831, which went to sea the same year. Its success was such as to
induce him to begin iron shipbuilding on a large scale, at the same
time as the Messrs. Laird did at Birkenhead; and in 1835, Mr. Fairbairn
established extensive works at Millwall, on the Thames,--afterwards
occupied by Mr. Scott Russell, in whose yard the "Great Eastern"
steamship was erected,--where in the course of some fourteen years he
built upwards of a hundred and twenty iron ships, some of them above
2000 tons burden. It was in fact the first great iron shipbuilding
yard in Britain, and led the way in a branch of business which has
since become of first-rate magnitude and importance. Mr. Fairbairn was
a most laborious experimenter in iron, and investigated in great detail
the subject of its strength, the value of different kinds of riveted
joints compared with the solid plate, and the distribution of the
material throughout the structure, as well as the form of the vessel
itself. It would indeed be difficult to over-estimate the value of his
investigations on these points in the earlier stages of this now highly
important branch of the national industry.
To facilitate the manufacture of his iron-sided ships, Mr. Fairbairn,
about the year 1839, invented a machine for riveting boiler plates by
steam-power. The usual method by which this process had before been
executed was by hand-hammers, worked by men placed at each side of the
plate to be riveted, acting simultaneously on both sides of the bolt.
But this process was tedious and expensive, as well as clumsy and
imperfect; and some more rapid and precise method of fixing the plates
firmly together was urgently wanted. Mr. Fairbairn's machine
completely supplied the want. By its means the rivet was driven into
its place, and firmly fastened there by a couple of strokes of a hammer
impelled by steam. Aided by the Jacquard punching-machine of Roberts,
the riveting of plates of the largest size has thus become one of the
simplest operations in iron-manufacturing.
The thorough knowledge which Mr. Fairbairn possessed of the strength of
wrought-iron in the form of the hollow beam (which a wrought-iron ship
really is) naturally led to his being consulted by the late Robert
Stephenson as to the structures by means of which it was proposed to
span the estuary of the Conway and the Straits of Menai; and the result
was the Conway and Britannia Tubular Bridges, the history of which we
have fully described elsewhere.[7] There is no reason to doubt that by
far the largest share of the merit of working out the practical details
of those structures, and thus realizing Robert Stephenson's magnificent
idea of the tubular bridge, belongs to Mr. Fairbairn.
In all matters connected with the qualities and strength of iron, he
came to be regarded as a first-rate authority, and his advice was often
sought and highly valued. The elaborate experiments instituted by him
as to the strength of iron of all kinds have formed the subject of
various papers which he has read before the British Association, the
Royal Society, and the Literary and Philosophical Society of
Manchester. His practical inquiries as to the strength of boilers have
led to his being frequently called upon to investigate the causes of
boiler explosions, on which subject he has published many elaborate
reports. The study of this subject led him to elucidate the law
according to which the density of steam varies throughout an extensive
range of pressures and atmospheres,--in singular confirmation of what
had before been provisionally calculated from the mechanical theory of
heat. His discovery of the true method of preventing the tendency of
tubes to collapse, by dividing the flues of long boilers into short
lengths by means of stiffening rings, arising out of the same
investigation, was one of the valuable results of his minute study of
the subject; and is calculated to be of essential value in the
manufacturing districts by diminishing the chances of boiler
explosions, and saving the lamentable loss of life which has during the
last twenty years been occasioned by the malconstruction of boilers.
Among Mr. Fairbairn's most recent, inquiries are those conducted by him
at the instance of the British Government relative to the construction
of iron-plated ships, his report of which has not yet been made public,
most probably for weighty political reasons.
We might also refer to the practical improvements which Mr. Fairbairn
has been instrumental in introducing in the construction of buildings
of various kinds by the use of iron. He has himself erected numerous
iron structures, and pointed out the road which other manufacturers
have readily followed. "I am one of those," said he, in his 'Lecture
on the Progress of Engineering,' "who have great faith in iron walls
and iron beams; and although I have both spoken and written much on the
subject, I cannot too forcibly recommend it to public attention. It is
now twenty years since I constructed an iron house, with the machinery
of a corn-mill, for Halil Pasha, then Seraskier of the Turkish army at
Constantinople. I believe it was the first iron house built in this
country; and it was constructed at the works at Millwall, London, in
1839." [8]
Since then iron structures of all kinds have been erected: iron
lighthouses, iron-and-crystal palaces, iron churches, and iron bridges.
Iron roads have long been worked by iron locomotives; and before many
years have passed a telegraph of iron wire will probably be found
circling the globe. We now use iron roofs, iron bedsteads, iron ropes,
and iron pavement; and even the famous "wooden walls of England" are
rapidly becoming reconstructed of iron. In short, we are in the midst
of what Mr. Worsaae has characterized as the Age of Iron.
At the celebration of the opening of the North Wales Railway at Bangor,
almost within sight of his iron bridge across the Straits of Menai,
Robert Stephenson said, "We are daily producing from the bowels of the
earth a raw material, in its crude state apparently of no worth, but
which, when converted into a locomotive engine, flies over bridges of
the same material, with a speed exceeding that of the bird, advancing
wealth and comfort throughout the country. Such are the powers of that
all-civilizing instrument, Iron."
Iron indeed plays a highly important part in modern civilization. Out
of it are formed alike the sword and the ploughshare, the cannon and
the printing-press; and while civilization continues partial and
half-developed, as it still is, our liberties and our industry must
necessarily in a great measure depend for their protection upon the
excellence of our weapons of war as well as on the superiority of our
instruments of peace. Hence the skill and ingenuity displayed in the
invention of rifled guns and artillery, and iron-sided ships and
batteries, the fabrication of which would be impossible but for the
extraordinary development of the iron-manufacture, and the marvellous
power and precision of our tool-making machines, as described in
preceding chapters.
"Our strength, wealth, and commerce," said Mr. Cobden in the course of
a recent debate in the House of Commons, "grow out of the skilled
labour of the men working in metals. They are at the foundation of our
manufacturing greatness; and in case you were attacked, they would at
once be available, with their hard hands and skilled brains, to
manufacture your muskets and your cannon, your shot and your shell.
What has given us our Armstrongs, Whitworths, and Fairbairns, but the
free industry of this country? If you can build three times more
steam-engines than any other country, and have threefold the force of
mechanics, to whom and to what do you owe that, but to the men who have
trained them, and to those principles of commerce out of which the
wealth of the country has grown? We who have some hand in doing that,
are not ignorant that we have been and are increasing the strength of
the country in proportion as we are raising up skilled artisans." [9]
The reader who has followed us up to this point will have observed that
handicraft labour was the first stage of the development of human
power, and that machinery has been its last and highest. The
uncivilized man began with a stone for a hammer, and a splinter of
flint for a chisel, each stage of his progress being marked by an
improvement in his tools. Every machine calculated to save labour or
increase production was a substantial addition to his power over the
material resources of nature, enabling him to subjugate them more
effectually to his wants and uses; and every extension of machinery has
served to introduce new classes of the population to the enjoyment of
its benefits. In early times the products of skilled industry were for
the most part luxuries intended for the few, whereas now the most
exquisite tools and engines are employed in producing articles of
ordinary consumption for the great mass of the community. Machines
with millions of fingers work for millions of purchasers--for the poor
as well as the rich; and while the machinery thus used enriches its
owners, it no less enriches the public with its products.
Much of the progress to which we have adverted has been the result of
the skill and industry of our own time. "Indeed," says Mr. Fairbairn,
"the mechanical operations of the present day could not have been
accomplished at any cost thirty years ago; and what was then considered
impossible is now performed with an exactitude that never fails to
accomplish the end in view." For this we are mainly indebted to the
almost creative power of modern machine-tools, and the facilities which
they present for the production and reproduction of other machines. We
also owe much to the mechanical agencies employed to drive them. Early
inventors yoked wind and water to sails and wheels, and made them work
machinery of various kinds; but modern inventors have availed
themselves of the far more swift and powerful, yet docile force of
steam, which has now laid upon it the heaviest share of the burden of
toil, and indeed become the universal drudge. Coal, water, and a
little oil, are all that the steam-engine, with its bowels of iron and
heart of fire, needs to enable it to go on working night and day,
without rest or sleep. Yoked to machinery of almost infinite variety,
the results of vast ingenuity and labour, the Steam-engine pumps water,
drives spindles, thrashes corn, prints books, hammers iron, ploughs
land, saws timber, drives piles, impels ships, works railways,
excavates docks; and, in a word, asserts an almost unbounded supremacy
over the materials which enter into the daily use of mankind, for
clothing, for labour, for defence, for household purposes, for
locomotion, for food, or for instruction.
[1] Long after, when married and settled at Manchester, the fiddle,
which had been carefully preserved, was taken down from the shelf for
the amusement of the children; but though they were well enough pleased
with it, the instrument was never brought from its place without
creating alarm in the mind of their mother lest anybody should hear it.
At length a dancing-master, who was giving lessons in the
neighbourhood, borrowed the fiddle, and, to the great relief of the
family, it was never returned. Many years later Mr. Fairbairn was
present at the starting of a cotton mill at Wesserling in Alsace
belonging to Messrs. Gros, Deval, and Co., for which his Manchester
firm had provided the mill-work and water-wheel (the first erected in
France on the suspension principle, when the event was followed by an
entertainment). During dinner Mr. Fairbairn had been explaining to M.
Gros, who spoke a little English, the nature of home-brewed beer, which
he much admired, having tasted it when in England. The dinner was
followed by music, in the performance of which the host himself took
part; and on Mr. Fairbairn's admiring his execution on the violin, M.
Gros asked him if he played. "A little," was the almost unconscious
reply. "Then you must have the goodness to play some," and the
instrument was in a moment placed in his hands, amidst urgent requests
from all sides that he should play. There was no alternative; so he
proceeded to perform one of his best tunes--"The Keel Row." The
company listened with amazement, until the performer's career was
suddenly cut short by the host exclaiming at the top of his voice,
"Stop, stop, Monsieur, by gar that be HOME-BREWED MUSIC!"
[2] "Although not a native of Newcastle," he then said, "he owed almost
everything to Newcastle. He got the rudiments of his education there,
such as it was; and that was (something like that of his revered
predecessor George Stephenson) at a colliery. He was brought up as an
engineer at the Percy Main Colliery. He was there seven years; and if
it had not been for the opportunities he then enjoyed, together with
the use of the library at North Shields, he believed he would not have
been there to address them. Being self-taught, but with some little
ambition, and a determination to improve himself, he was now enabled to
stand before them with some pretensions to mechanical knowledge, and
the persuasion that he had been a useful contributor to practical
science and objects connected with mechanical engineering."--Meeting of
the Institute of Mechanical Engineers at Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1858.
[3] Useful Information for Engineers, 2nd series, 1860, p. 211.
[4] Lecture at Derby--Useful Information for Engineers, 2nd series, p.
212.
[5] One of the reasons which induced Kennedy thus early to begin the
business of mule-spinning has been related as follows. While employed
as apprentice at Chowbent, he happened to sleep over the master's
apartment; and late one evening, on the latter returning from market,
his wife asked his success. "I've sold the eightys," said he, "at a
guinea a pound." "What," exclaimed the mistress, in a loud voice,
"sold the eightys for ONLY a guinea a pound! I never heard of such a
thing." The apprentice could not help overhearing the remark, and it
set him a-thinking. He knew the price of cotton and the price of
labour, and concluded there must be a very large margin of profit. So
soon as he was out of his time, therefore, he determined that he should
become a cotton spinner.
[6] The subject will be found fully treated in Mr. Fairbairn's own
work, A Treatise on Mills and Mill-Work, embodying the results of his
large experience.
[7] Lives of the Engineers, vol. iii. 416-40. See also An Account of
the Construction of the Britannia and Conway Tubular Bridges. By
William Fairbairn, C.E. 1849.
[8] Useful Information for Engineers, 2nd series, 225. The mere list
of Mr. Fairbairn's writings would occupy considerable space; for,
notwithstanding his great labours as an engineer, he has also been an
industrious writer. His papers on Iron, read at different times before
the British Association, the Royal Society, and the Literary and
Philosophical Institution of Manchester, are of great value. The
treatise on "Iron" in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is from his pen, and
he has contributed a highly interesting paper to Dr. Scoffern's Useful
Metals and their Alloys on the Application of Iron to the purposes of
Ordnance, Machinery, Bridges, and House and Ship Building. Another
valuable but less-known contribution to Iron literature is his Report
on Machinery in General, published in the Reports on the Paris
Universal Exhibition of 1855. The experiments conducted by Mr.
Fairbairn for the purpose of proving the excellent properties of iron
for shipbuilding--the account of which was published in the Trans
actions of the Royal Society eventually led to his further experiments
to determine the strength and form of the Britannia and Conway Tubular
Bridges, plate-girders, and other constructions, the result of which
was to establish quite a new era in the history of bridge as well as
ship building.
[9] House of Commons Debate, 7th July, 1862.