About this time a gas-work, the first in Glasgow, was projected, and the company having been formed, the directors advertised for a superintendent and foreman, to whom they offered a “liberal salary.” Though Beaumont had never seen gaslight before, except at the illumination of his father’s colliery office after the Peace of Amiens, which was accomplished in a very simple and original manner, without either condenser, purifier, or gas-holder, and though he knew nothing of the art of gas-making, he had the courage to apply for the situation. He was one of twenty candidates, and the fortunate one; and in August, 1817, we find him appointed foreman of the Glasgow Gasworks, for five years, at the salary of 90L. a year. Before the expiry of his term he was reappointed for six years more, at the advanced salary of 200L., with the status of manager and engineer of the works. His salary was gradually increased to 400L. a year, with a free dwelling-house, until 1847, when, after a faithful service of thirty years, during which he had largely extended the central works, and erected branch works in Tradeston and Partick, he finally resigned the management.
The situation of manager of the Glasgow Gas-works was in many respects well suited for the development of Mr. Neilson’s peculiar abilities. In the first place it afforded him facilities for obtaining theoretical as well as practical knowledge in Chemical Science, of which he was a diligent student at the Andersonian University, as well as of Natural Philosophy and Mathematics in their higher branches. In the next place it gave free scope for his ingenuity in introducing improvements in the manufacture of gas, then in its infancy. He was the first to employ clay retorts; and he introduced sulphate of iron as a self-acting purifier, passing the gas through beds of charcoal to remove its oily and tarry elements. The swallow-tail or union jet was also his invention, and it has since come into general use.
While managing the Gas-works, one of Mr.Neilson’s labours of love was the establishment and direction by him of a Workmen’s Institution for mutual improvement. Having been a workman himself, and experienced the disadvantages of an imperfect education in early life, as well as the benefits arising from improved culture in later years, he desired to impart some of these advantages to the workmen in his employment, who consisted chiefly of persons from remote parts of the Highlands or from Ireland. Most of them could not even read, and his principal difficulty consisted in persuading them that it was of any use to learn. For some time they resisted his persuasions to form a Workmen’s Institution, with a view to the establishment of a library, classes, and lectures, urging as a sufficient plea for not joining it, that they could not read, and that books would be of no use to them. At last Mr. Neilson succeeded, though with considerable difficulty, in inducing fourteen of the workmen to adopt his plan. Each member was to contribute a small sum monthly, to be laid out in books, the Gas Company providing the members with a comfortable room in which they might meet to read and converse in the evenings instead of going to the alehouse. The members were afterwards allowed to take the books home to read, and the room was used for the purpose of conversation on the subjects of the books read by them, and occasionally for lectures delivered by the members themselves on geography, arithmetic, chemistry, and mechanics. Their numbers increased so that the room in which they met became insufficient for their accommodation, when the Gas Company provided them with a new and larger place of meeting, together with a laboratory and workshop. In the former they studied practical chemistry, and in the latter they studied practical mechanics, making for themselves an air pump and an electrifying machine, as well as preparing the various models used in the course of the lectures. The effects on the workmen were eminently beneficial, and the institution came to be cited as among the most valuable of its kind in the kingdom.* [footnote…
Article by Dugald Bannatyne in Glasgow Mechanic’s Magazine, No. 53, Dec. 1824.
…]
Mr. Neilson throughout watched carefully over its working, and exerted himself in all ways to promote its usefulness, in which he had the zealous co-operation of the leading workmen themselves, and the gratitude of all. On the opening of the new and enlarged rooms in 1825, we find him delivering an admirable address, which was thought worthy of republication, together with the reply of George Sutherland, one of the workmen, in which Mr. Neilson’s exertions as its founder and chief supporter were gratefully and forcibly expressed.*
[footnote…
Glasgow Mechanic’s Magazine, vol. iii. p. 159. …]
It was during the period of his connection with the Glasgow Gas-works that Mr. Neilson directed his attention to the smelting of iron. His views in regard to the subject were at first somewhat crude, as appears from a paper read by him before the Glasgow Philosophical Society early in 1825. It appears that in the course of the preceding year his attention had been called to the subject by an iron-maker, who asked him if he thought it possible to purify the air blown into the blast furnaces, in like manner as carburetted hydrogen gas was purified. The ironmaster supposed that it was the presence of sulphur in the air that caused blast-furnaces to work irregularly, and to make bad iron in the summer months. Mr. Neilson was of opinion that this was not the true cause, and he was rather disposed to think it attributable to the want of a due proportion of oxygen in summer, when the air was more rarefied, besides containing more aqueous vapour than in winter. He therefore thought the true remedy was in some way or other to throw in a greater proportion of oxygen; and he suggested that, in order to dry the air, it should be passed, on its way to the furnace, through two long tunnels containing calcined lime. But further inquiry served to correct his views, and eventually led him to the true theory of blasting.
Shortly after, his attention was directed by Mr. James Ewing to a defect in one of the Muirkirk blast-furnaces, situated about half a mile distant from the blowing-engine, which was found not to work so well as others which were situated close to it. The circumstances of the case led Mr. Neilson to form the opinion that, as air increases in volume according to temperature, if he were to heat it by passing it through a red-hot vessel, its volume would be increased, according to the well-known law, and the blast might thus be enabled to do more duty in the distant furnace. He proceeded to make a series of experiments at the Gas-works, trying the effect of heated air on the illuminating power of gas, by bringing up a stream of it in a tube so as to surround the gas-burner. He found that by this means the combustion of the gas was rendered more intense, and its illuminating power greatly increased. He proceeded to try a similar experiment on a common smith’s fire, by blowing the fire with heated air, and the effect was the same; the fire was much more brilliant, and accompanied by an unusually intense degree of heat.
Having obtained such marked results by these small experiments, it naturally occurred to him that a similar increase in intensity of combustion and temperature would attend the application of the process to the blast-furnace on a large scale; but being only a gas-maker, he had the greatest difficulty in persuading any ironmaster to permit him to make the necessary experiment’s with blast-furnaces actually at work. Besides, his theory was altogether at variance with the established practice, which was to supply air as cold as possible, the prevailing idea being that the coldness of the air in winter was the cause of the best iron being then produced. Acting on these views, the efforts of the ironmasters had always been directed to the cooling of the blast, and various expedients were devised for the purpose. Thus the regulator was painted white, as being the coolest colour; the air was passed over cold water, and in some cases the air pipes were even surrounded by ice, all with the object of keeping the blast cold. When, therefore, Mr. Neilson proposed entirely to reverse the process, and to employ hot instead of cold blast, the incredulity of the ironmasters may well be imagined. What! Neilson, a mere maker of gas, undertake to instruct practical men in the manufacture of iron! And to suppose that heated air can be used for the purpose! It was presumption in the extreme, or at best the mere visionary idea of a person altogether unacquainted with the subject!
At length, however, Mr. Neilson succeeded in inducing Mr. Charles Macintosh of Crossbasket, and Mr. Colin Dunlop of the Clyde Iron Works, to allow him to make a trial of the hot air process. In the first imperfect attempts the air was heated to little more than 80 degrees Fahrenheit, yet the results were satisfactory, and the scoriae from the furnace evidently contained less iron. He was therefore desirous of trying his plan upon a more extensive scale, with the object, if possible, of thoroughly establishing the soundness of his principle. In this he was a good deal hampered even by those ironmasters who were his friends, and had promised him the requisite opportunities for making a fair trial of the new process. They strongly objected to his making the necessary alterations in the furnaces, and he seemed to be as far from a satisfactory experiment as ever. In one instance, where he had so far succeeded as to be allowed to heat the blast-main, he asked permission to introduce deflecting plates in the main or to put a bend in the pipe, so as to bring the blast more closely against the heated sides of the pipe, and also increase the area of heating surface, in order to raise the temperature to a higher point; but this was refused, and it was said that if even a bend were put in the pipe the furnace would stop working. These prejudices proved a serious difficulty in the way of our inventor, and several more years passed before he was allowed to put a bend in the blast-main. After many years of perseverance, he was, however, at length enabled to work out his plan into a definite shape at the Clyde Iron Works, and its practical value was at once admitted. At the meeting of the Mechanical Engineers’ Society held in May, 1859, Mr. Neilson explained that his invention consisted solely in the principle of heating the blast between the engine and the furnace, and was not associated with any particular construction of the intermediate heating apparatus. This, he said, was the cause of its success; and in some respects it resembled the invention of his countryman, James Watt, who, in connection with the steam-engine, invented the plan of condensing the steam in a separate vessel, and was successful in maintaining his invention by not limiting it to any particular construction of the condenser. On the same occasion he took the opportunity of acknowledging the firmness with which the English ironmasters had stood by him when attempts were made to deprive him of the benefits of his invention; and to them he acknowledged he was mainly indebted for the successful issue of the severe contests he had to undergo. For there were, of course, certain of the ironmasters, both English and Scotch, supporters of the cause of free trade in others’ inventions, who sought to resist the patent, after it had come into general use, and had been recognised as one of the most valuable improvements of modem times.* [footnote…
Mr. Mushet described it as “a wonderful discovery,” and one of the “most novel and beautiful improvements in his time.” Professor Gregory of Aberdeen characterized it as “the greatest improvement with which he was acquainted.” Mr. Jessop, an extensive English iron manufacturer, declared it to be “of as great advantage in the iron trade as Arkwright’s machinery was in the cotton-spinning trade; and Mr. Fairbairn, in his contribution on “Iron” in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, says that it “has effected an entire revolution in the iron industry of Great Britain, and forms the last era in the history of this material.”
…]
The patent was secured in 1828 for a term of fourteen years; but, as Mr. Neilson did not himself possess the requisite capital to enable him to perfect the invention, or to defend it if attacked, he found it necessary to invite other gentlemen, able to support him in these respects, to share its profits; retaining for himself only three-tenths of the whole. His partners were Mr. Charles Macintosh, Mr. Colin Dunlop, and Mr.John Wilson of Dundyvan. The charge made by them was only a shilling a ton for all iron produced by the new process; this low rate being fixed in order to ensure the introduction of the patent into general use, as well as to reduce to a minimum the temptations of the ironmasters to infringe it.
The first trials of the process were made at the blast-furnaces of Clyde and Calder; from whence the use of the hot blast gradually extended to the other iron-mining districts. In the course of a few years every furnace in Scotland, with one exception (that at Carron), had adopted the improvement; while it was also employed in half the furnaces of England and Wales, and in many of the furnaces on the Continent and in America. In course of time, and with increasing experience, various improvements were introduced in the process, more particularly in the shape of the air-heating vessels; the last form adopted being that of a congeries of tubes, similar to the tubular arrangement in the boiler of the locomotive, by which the greatest extent of heating surface was provided for the thorough heating of the air. By these modifications the temperature of the air introduced into the furnace has been raised from 240 degrees to 600 degrees, or the temperature of melting lead. To protect the nozzle of the air-pipe as it entered the furnace against the action of the intense heat to which it was subjected, a spiral pipe for a stream of cold water constantly to play in has been introduced within the sides of the iron tuyere through which the nozzle passes; by which means the tuyere is kept comparatively cool, while the nozzle of the air-pipe is effectually protected.*
[footnote…
The invention of the tubular air-vessels and the water-tuyere belongs, we believe, to Mr. John Condie, sometime manager of the Blair Iron Works.
…]
This valuable invention did not escape the usual fate of successful patents, and it was on several occasions the subject of protracted litigation. The first action occurred in 1832; but the objectors shortly gave in, and renewed their licence. In 1839, when the process had become generally adopted throughout Scotland, and, indeed, was found absolutely essential for smelting the peculiar ores of that country–more especially Mushet’s Black Band–a powerful combination was formed amongst the ironmasters to resist the patent. The litigation which ensued extended over five years, during which period some twenty actions were proceeding in Scotland, and several in England. Three juries sat upon the subject at different times, and on three occasions appeals were carried to the House of Lords. One jury trial occupied ten days, during which a hundred and two witnesses were examined; the law costs on both sides amounting, it is supposed, to at least 40,000L. The result was, that the novelty and merit of Mr. Neilson’s invention were finally established, and he was secured in the enjoyment of the patent right.
We are gratified to add, that, though Mr. Neilson had to part with two-thirds of the profits of the invention to secure the capital and influence necessary to bring it into general use, he realized sufficient to enable him to enjoy the evening of his life in peace and comfort. He retired from active business to an estate which he purchased in 1851 in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, where he is found ready to lend a hand in every good work–whether in agricultural improvement, railway extension, or the moral and social good of those about him. Mindful of the success of his Workmen’s Institution at the Glasgow Gas-Works, he has, almost at his own door, erected a similar Institution for the use of the parish in which his property is situated, the beneficial effects of which have been very marked in the district. We may add that Mr. Neilson’s merits have been recognised by many eminent bodies–by the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Chemical Society, and others–the last honour conferred on him being his election as a Member of the Royal Society in 1846.
The invention of the hot blast, in conjunction with the discovery of the Black Band ironstone, has had an extra ordinary effect upon the development of the iron-manufacture of Scotland. The coals of that country are generally unfit for coking, and lose as much as 55 per cent. in the process. But by using the hot blast, the coal could be sent to the blast-furnace in its raw state, by which a large saving of fuel was effected.*
[footnote…
Mr. Mushet says, “The greatest produce in iron per furnace with the Black Band and cold blast never exceeded 60 tons a-week. The produce per furnace now averages 90 tons a-week. Ten tons of this I attribute to the use of raw pit-coal, and the other twenty tons to the use of hot blast.” [Papers on Iron and Steel, 127.] The produce per furnace is now 200 tons a-week and upwards. The hot blast process was afterwards applied to the making of iron with the anthracite or stone coal of Wales; for which a patent was taken out by George Crane in 1836. Before the hot blast was introduced, anthracite coal would not act as fuel in the blast-furnace. When put in, it merely had the effect of putting the fire out. With the aid of the hot blast, however, it now proves to be a most valuable fuel in smelting. …]
Even coals of an inferior quality were by its means made available for the manufacture of iron. But one of the peculiar qualities of the Black Band ironstone is that in many cases it contains sufficient coaly matter for purposes of calcination, without any admixture of coal whatever. Before its discovery, all the iron manufactured in Scotland was made from clay-band; but the use of the latter has in a great measure been discontinued wherever a sufficient supply of Black Band can be obtained. And it is found to exist very extensively in most of the midland Scotch counties,–the coal and iron measures stretching in a broad belt from the Firth of Forth to the Irish Channel at the Firth of Clyde. At the time when the hot blast was invented, the fortunes of many of the older works were at a low ebb, and several of them had been discontinued; but they were speedily brought to life again wherever Black Band could be found. In 1829, the year after Neilson’s patent was taken out, the total make of Scotland was 29,000 tons. As fresh discoveries of the mineral were made, in Ayrshire and Lanarkshire, new works were erected, until, in 1845, we find the production of Scotch pig-iron had increased to 475,000 tons. It has since increased to upwards of a million of tons, nineteen-twentieths of which are made from Black Band ironstone.* [footnote…
It is stated in the North British Review for Nov. 1845, that “As in Scotland every furnace–with the exception of one at Carron–now uses the hot blast the saving on our present produce of 400,000 tons of pig-iron is 2,000,000 tons of coals, 200,000 tons of limestone, and #650,000 sterling per annum.” But as the Scotch produce is now above a million tons of pig-iron a year, the above figures will have to be multiplied by 2 1/2 to give the present annual savings. …]
Employment has thus been given to vast numbers of our industrial population, and the wealth and resources of the Scotch iron districts have been increased to an extraordinary extent. During the last year there were 125 furnaces in blast throughout Scotland, each employing about 400 men in making an average of 200 tons a week; and the money distributed amongst the workmen may readily be computed from the fact that, under the most favourable circumstances, the cost of making iron in wages alone amounts to 36s. a-ton.* [footnote…
Papers read by Mr. Ralph Moore, Mining Engineer, Glasgow, before the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Edin. 1861, pp. 13, 14. …]
An immense additional value was given to all land in which the Black Band was found. Mr. Mushet mentions that in 1839 the proprietor of the Airdrie estate derived a royalty of 16,500L. from the mineral, which had not before its discovery yielded him one farthing. At the same time, many fortunes have been made by pushing and energetic men who have of late years entered upon this new branch of industry. Amongst these may be mentioned the Bairds of Gartsherrie, who vie with the Guests and Crawshays of South Wales, and have advanced themselves in the course of a very few years from the station of small farmers to that of great capitalists owning estates in many counties, holding the highest character commercial men, and ranking among the largest employers of labour in the kingdom.
CHAPTER X.
MECHANICAL INVENTIONS AND INVENTORS.
“L’invention nest-elle pas la poesie de la science? . . . Toutes les grandes decouvertes portent avec elles la trace ineffacable d’une pensee poetique. ll faut etre poete pour creer. Aussi, sommes-nous convaincus que si les puissantes machines, veritable source de la production et de l’industrie de nos jours, doivent recevoir des modifications radicales, ce sera a des hommes d’imagination, et non point a dea hommes purement speciaux, que l’on devra cette transformation.”–E. M. BATAILLE, Tr aite des Machines a Vapeur.
Tools have played a highly important part in the history of civilization. Without tools and the ability to use them, man were indeed but a “poor, bare, forked animal,”–worse clothed than the birds, worse housed than the beaver, worse fed than the jackal. “Weak in himself,” says Carlyle, “and of small stature, he stands on a basis, at most for the flattest-soled, of some half square foot, insecurely enough; has to straddle out his legs, Jest the very wind supplant him. Feeblest of bipeds! Three quintals are a crushing load for him; the steer of the meadow tosses him aloft like a waste rag. Nevertheless he can use tools, can devise tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; he kneads glowing iron as if it were soft paste; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unvarying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without tools: without tools he is nothing; with tools he is all.” His very first contrivances to support life were tools of the simplest and rudest construction; and his latest achievements in the substitution of machinery for the relief of the human hand and intellect are founded on the use of tools of a still higher order. Hence it is not without good reason that man has by some philosophers been defined as A TOOL-MAKING ANIMAL.
Tools, like everything else, had small beginnings. With the primitive stone-hammer and chisel very little could be done. The felling of a tree would occupy a workman a month, unless helped by the destructive action of fire. Dwellings could not be built, the soil could not be tilled, clothes could not be fashioned and made, and the hewing out of a boat was so tedious a process that the wood must have been far gone in decay before it could be launched. It was a great step in advance to discover the art of working in metals, more especially in steel, one of the few metals capable of taking a sharp edge and keeping it. From the date of this discovery, working in wood and stone would be found comparatively easy; and the results must speedily have been felt not only in the improvement of man’s daily food, but in his domestic and social condition. Clothing could then be made, the primitive forest could be cleared and tillage carried on; abundant fuel could be obtained, dwellings erected, ships built, temples reared; every improvement in tools marking a new step in the development of the human intellect, and a further stage in the progress of human civilization.
The earliest tools were of the simplest possible character, consisting principally of modifications of the wedge; such as the knife, the shears (formed of two knives working on a joint), the chisel, and the axe. These, with the primitive hammer, formed the principal stock-in-trade of the early mechanics, who were handicraftsmen in the literal sense of the word. But the work which the early craftsmen in wood, stone, brass, and iron, contrived to execute, sufficed to show how much expertness in the handling of tools will serve to compensate for their mechanical imperfections. Workmen then sought rather to aid muscular strength than to supersede it, and mainly to facilitate the efforts of manual skill. Another tool became added to those mentioned above, which proved an additional source of power to the workman. We mean the Saw, which was considered of so much importance that its inventor was honoured with a place among the gods in the mythology of the Greeks. This invention is said to have been suggested by the arrangement of the teeth in the jaw of a serpent, used by Talus the nephew of Daedalus in dividing a piece of wood. From the representations of ancient tools found in the paintings at Herculaneum it appears that the frame-saw used by the ancients very nearly resembled that still in use; and we are informed that the tools employed in the carpenters’ shops at Nazareth at this day are in most respects the same as those represented in the buried Roman city. Another very ancient tool referred to in the Bible and in Homer was the File, which was used to sharpen weapons and implements. Thus the Hebrews “had a file for the mattocks, and for the coulters, and for the forks, and for the axes, and to sharpen the goads.”* [footnote…
1 Samuel, ch. xiii. v. 21.
…]
When to these we add the adze, plane-irons, the anger, and the chisel, we sum up the tools principally relied on by the early mechanics for working in wood and iron.
Such continued to be the chief tools in use down almost to our own day. The smith was at first the principal tool-maker; but special branches of trade were gradually established, devoted to tool-making. So long, however, as the workman relied mainly on his dexterity of hand, the amount of production was comparatively limited; for the number of skilled workmen was but small. The articles turned out by them, being the product of tedious manual labour, were too dear to come into common use, and were made almost exclusively for the richer classes of the community. It was not until machinery had been invented and become generally adopted that many of the ordinary articles of necessity and of comfort were produced in sufficient abundance and at such prices as enabled them to enter into the consumption of the great body of the people.
But every improver of tools had a long and difficult battle to fight; for any improvement in their effective power was sure to touch the interests of some established craft. Especially was this the case with machines, which are but tools of a more complete though complicated kind than those above described.
Take, for instance, the case of the Saw. The tedious drudgery of dividing timber by the old fashioned hand-saw is well known. To avoid it, some ingenious person suggested that a number of saws should be fixed to a frame in a mill, so contrived as to work with a reciprocating motion, upwards and downwards, or backwards and forwards, and that this frame so mounted should be yoked to the mill wheel, and the saws driven by the power of wind or water. The plan was tried, and, as may readily be imagined, the amount of effective work done by this machine-saw was immense, compared with the tedious process of sawing by hand.
It will be observed, however, that the new method must have seriously interfered with the labour of the hand-sawyers; and it was but natural that they should regard the establishment of the saw-mills with suspicion and hostility. Hence a long period elapsed before the hand-sawyers would permit the new machinery to be set up and worked. The first saw-mill in England was erected by a Dutchman, near London, in 1663, but was shortly abandoned in consequence of the determined hostility of the workmen. More than a century passed before a second saw-mill was set up; when, in 1767, Mr. John Houghton, a London timber-merchant, by the desire and with the approbation of the Society of Arts, erected one at Limehouse, to be driven by wind. The work was directed by one James Stansfield, who had gone over to Holland for the purpose of learning the art of constructing and managing the sawing machinery. But the mill was no sooner erected than a mob assembled and razed it to the ground. The principal rioters having been punished, and the loss to the proprietor having been made good by the nation, a new mill was shortly after built, and it was suffered to work without further molestation.
Improved methods of manufacture have usually had to encounter the same kind of opposition. Thus, when the Flemish weavers came over to England in the seventeenth century, bringing with them their skill and their industry, they excited great jealousy and hostility amongst the native workmen. Their competition as workmen was resented as an injury, but their improved machinery was regarded as a far greater source of mischief. In a memorial presented to the king in 1621 we find the London weavers complaining of the foreigners’ competition, but especially that “they have made so bould of late as to devise engines for working of tape, lace, ribbin, and such like, wherein one man doth more among them than 7 Englishe men can doe; so as their cheap sale of commodities beggereth all our Englishe artificers of that trade, and enricheth them.”*
[footnote…
State Papers, Dom. 1621, Vol. 88, No. 112. …]
At a much more recent period new inventions have had to encounter serious rioting and machine-breaking fury. Kay of the fly-shuttle, Hargreaves of the spinning-jenny, and Arkwright of the spinning-frame, all had to fly from Lancashire, glad to escape with their lives. Indeed, says Mr. Bazley, “so jealous were the people, and also the legislature, of everything calculated to supersede men’s labour, that when the Sankey Canal, six miles long, near Warrington, was authorized about the middle of last century, it was on the express condition that the boats plying on it should be drawn by men only!”*
[footnote…
Lectures on the Results of the Great Exhibition of 1851, 2nd Series, 117.
…]
Even improved agricultural tools and machines have had the same opposition to encounter; and in our own time bands of rural labourers have gone from farm to farm breaking drill-ploughs, winnowing, threshing, and other machines, down even to the common drills,–not perceiving that if their policy had proved successful, and tools could have been effectually destroyed, the human race would at once have been reduced to their teeth and nails, and civilization summarily abolished.*
[footnote…
Dr. Kirwan, late President of the Royal Irish Academy, who had travelled much on the continent of Europe, used to relate, when speaking of the difficulty of introducing improvements in the arts and manufactures, and of the prejudices entertained for old practices, that, in Normandy, the farmers had been so long accustomed to the use of plough’s whose shares were made entirely of WOOD that they could not be prevailed on to make trial of those with IRON; that they considered them to be an idle and useless innovation on the long-established practices of their ancestors; and that they carried these prejudices so far as to force the government to issue an edict on the subject. And even to the last they were so obstinate in their attachment to ploughshares of wood that a tumultuous opposition was made to the enforcement of the edict, which for a short time threatened a rebellion in the province.– PARKES, Chemical Essays, 4th Ed. 473.
…]
It is, no doubt, natural that the ordinary class of workmen should regard with prejudice, if not with hostility, the introduction of machines calculated to place them at a disadvantage and to interfere with their usual employments; for to poor and not very far-seeing men the loss of daily bread is an appalling prospect. But invention does not stand still on that account. Human brains WILL work. Old tools are improved and new ones invented, superseding existing methods of production, though the weak and unskilled may occasionally be pushed aside or even trodden under foot. The consolation which remains is, that while the few suffer, society as a whole is vastly benefitted by the improved methods of production which are suggested, invented, and perfected by the experience of successive generations.
The living race is the inheritor of the industry and skill of all past times; and the civilization we enjoy is but the sum of the useful effects of labour during the past centuries. Nihil per saltum. By slow and often painful steps Nature’s secrets have been mastered. Not an effort has been made but has had its influence. For no human labour is altogether lost; some remnant of useful effect surviving for the benefit of the race, if not of the individual. Even attempts apparently useless have not really been so, but have served in some way to advance man to higher knowledge, skill, or discipline. “The loss of a position gained,” says Professor Thomson, “is an event unknown in the history of man’s struggle with the forces of inanimate nature.” A single step won gives a firmer foothold for further effort. The man may die, but the race survives and continues the work,–to use the poet’s simile, mounting on stepping-stones of dead selves to higher selves.
Philarete Chasles, indeed, holds that it is the Human Race that is your true inventor: “As if to unite all generations,” he says, “and to show that man can only act efficiently by association with others, it has been ordained that each inventor shall only interpret the first word of the problem he sets himself to solve, and that every great idea shall be the RESUME of the past at the same time that it is the germ of the future.” And rarely does it happen that any discovery or invention of importance is made by one man alone. The threads of inquiry are taken up and traced, one labourer succeeding another, each tracing it a little further, often without apparent result. This goes on sometimes for centuries, until at length some man, greater perhaps than his fellows, seeking to fulfil the needs of his time, gathers the various threads together, treasures up the gain of past successes and failures, and uses them as the means for some solid achievement, Thus Newton discovered the law of gravitation, and thus James Watt invented the steam-engine. So also of the Locomotive, of which Robert Stephenson said, “It has not been the invention of any one man, but of a race of mechanical engineers.” Or, as Joseph Bramah observed, in the preamble to his second Lock patent, “Among the number of patents granted there are comparatively few which can be called original so that it is difficult to say where the boundary of one ends and where that of another begins.”
The arts are indeed reared but slowly; and it was a wise observation of Lord Bacon that we are too apt to pass those ladders by which they have been reared, and reflect the whole merit on the last new performer. Thus, what is hailed as an original invention is often found to be but the result of a long succession of trials and experiments gradually following each other, which ought rather to be considered as a continuous series of achievements of the human mind than as the conquest of any single individual. It has sometimes taken centuries of experience to ascertain the value of a single fact in its various bearings. Like man himself, experience is feeble and apparently purposeless in its infancy, but acquires maturity and strength with age. Experience, however, is not limited to a lifetime, but is the stored-up wealth and power of our race. Even amidst the death of successive generations it is constantly advancing and accumulating, exhibiting at the same time the weakness and the power, the littleness and the greatness of our common humanity. And not only do we who live succeed to the actual results of our predecessors’ labours,–to their works of learning and of art, their inventions and discoveries, their tools and machines, their roads, bridges , canals, and railways,–but to the inborn aptitudes of blood and brain which they bequeath to us, to that “educability,” so to speak, which has been won for us by the labours of many generations, and forms our richest natural heritage.
The beginning of most inventions is very remote. The first idea, born within some unknown brain, passes thence into others, and at last comes forth complete, after a parturition, it may be, of centuries. One starts the idea, another developes it, and so on progressively until at last it is elaborated and worked out in practice; but the first not less than the last is entitled to his share in the merit of the invention, were it only possible to measure and apportion it duly. Sometimes a great original mind strikes upon some new vein of hidden power, and gives a powerful impulse to the inventive faculties of man, which lasts through generations. More frequently, however, inventions are not entirely new, but modifications of contrivances previously known, though to a few, and not yet brought into practical use. Glancing back over the history of mechanism, we occasionally see an invention seemingly full born, when suddenly it drops out of sight, and we hear no more of it for centuries. It is taken up de novo by some inventor, stimulated by the needs of his time, and falling again upon the track, he recovers the old footmarks, follows them up, and completes the work.
There is also such a thing as inventions being born before their time –the advanced mind of one generation projecting that which cannot be executed for want of the requisite means; but in due process of time, when mechanism has got abreast of the original idea, it is at length carried out; and thus it is that modern inventors are enabled to effect many objects which their predecessors had tried in vain to accomplish. As Louis Napoleon has said, “Inventions born before their time must remain useless until the level of common intellects rises to comprehend them.” For this reason, misfortune is often the lot of the inventor before his time, though glory and profit may belong to his successors. Hence the gift of inventing not unfrequently involves a yoke of sorrow. Many of the greatest inventors have lived neglected and died unrequited, before their merits could be recognised and estimated. Even if they succeed, they often raise up hosts of enemies in the persons whose methods they propose to supersede. Envy, malice, and detraction meet them in all their forms; they are assailed by combinations of rich and unscrupulous persons to wrest from them the profits of their ingenuity; and last and worst of all, the successful inventor often finds his claims to originality decried, and himself branded as a copyist and a pirate.
Among the inventions born out of time, and before the world could make adequate use of them, we can only find space to allude to a few, though they are so many that one is almost disposed to accept the words of Chaucer as true, that “There is nothing new but what has once been old;” or, as another writer puts it, “There is nothing new but what has before been known and forgotten;” or, in the words of Solomon, “The thing that hath been is that which shall be, and there is no new thing under the sun.” One of the most important of these is the use of Steam, which was well known to the ancients; but though it was used to grind drugs, to turn a spit, and to excite the wonder and fear of the credulous, a long time elapsed before it became employed as a useful motive-power. The inquiries and experiments on the subject extended through many ages. Friar Bacon, who flourished in the thirteenth century, seems fully to have anticipated, in the following remarkable passage, nearly all that steam could accomplish, as well as the hydraulic engine and the diving-bell, though the flying machine yet remains to be invented: —
“I will now,” says the Friar, “mention some of the wonderful works of art and nature in which there is nothing of magic, and which magic could not perform. Instruments may be made by which the largest ships, with only one man guiding them, will be carried with greater velocity than if they were full of sailors. Chariots may be constructed that will move with incredible rapidity, without the help of animals. Instruments of flying may be formed, in which a man, sitting at his ease and meditating on any subject, may beat the air with his artificial wings, after the manner of birds. A small instrument may be made to raise or depress the greatest weights. An instrument may be fabricated by which one man may draw a thousand men to him by force and against their will; as also machines which will enable men to walk at the bottom of seas or rivers without danger.” It is possible that Friar Bacon derived his knowledge of the powers which he thus described from the traditions handed down of former inventions which had been neglected and allowed to fall into oblivion; for before the invention of printing, which enabled the results of investigation and experience to be treasured up in books, there was great risk of the inventions of one age being lost to the succeeding generations. Yet Disraeli the elder is of opinion that the Romans had invented printing without being aware of it; or perhaps the senate dreaded the inconveniences attending its use, and did not care to deprive a large body of scribes of their employment. They even used stereotypes, or immovable printing-types, to stamp impressions on their pottery, specimens of which still exist. In China the art of printing is of great antiquity. Lithography was well known in Germany, by the very name which it still bears, nearly three hundred years before Senefelder reinvented it; and specimens of the ancient art are yet to be seen in the Royal Museum at Munich.* [footnote…
EDOUARD FOURNIER, Vieux-Neuf, i. 339. …]
Steam-locomotion by sea and land, had long been dreamt of and attempted. Blasco de Garay made his experiment in the harbour of Barcelona as early as 1543; Denis Papin made a similar attempt at Cassel in 1707; but it was not until Watt had solved the problem of the steam-engine that the idea of the steam-boat could be developed in practice, which was done by Miller of Dalswinton in 1788. Sages and poets have frequently foreshadowed inventions of great social moment. Thus Dr. Darwin’s anticipation of the locomotive, in his Botanic Garden, published in 1791, before any locomotive had been invented, might almost be regarded as prophetic:
Soon shall thy arm, unconquered Steam! afar Drag the slow barge, and drive the rapid car.
Denis Papin first threw out the idea of atmospheric locomotion; and Gauthey, another Frenchman, in 1782 projected a method of conveying parcels and merchandise by subterraneous tubes,* [footnote…
Memoires de l’ Academie des Sciences, 6 Feb. 1826. …]
after the method recently patented and brought into operation by the London Pneumatic Despatch Company. The balloon was an ancient Italian invention, revived by Mongolfier long after the original had been forgotten. Even the reaping machine is an old invention revived. Thus Barnabe Googe, the translator of a book from the German entitled ‘The whole Arte and Trade of Husbandrie,’ published in 1577, in the reign of Elizabeth, speaks of the reaping-machine as a worn-out invention–a thing “which was woont to be used in France. The device was a lowe kinde of carre with a couple of wheeles, and the frunt armed with sharpe syckles, whiche, forced by the beaste through the corne, did cut down al before it. This tricke,” says Googe, “might be used in levell and champion countreys; but with us it wolde make but ill-favoured woorke.”*
[footnote…
Farmer’s Magazine, 1817, No. ixxi. 291. …]
The Thames Tunnel was thought an entirely new manifestation of engineering genius; but the tunnel under the Euphrates at ancient Babylon, and that under the wide mouth of the harbour at Marseilles (a much more difficult work), show that the ancients were beforehand with us in the art of tunnelling. Macadamized roads are as old as the Roman empire; and suspension bridges, though comparatively new in Europe, have been known in China for centuries.
There is every reason to believe–indeed it seems clear that the Romans knew of gunpowder, though they only used it for purposes of fireworks; while the secret of the destructive Greek fire has been lost altogether. When gunpowder came to be used for purposes of war, invention busied itself upon instruments of destruction. When recently examining the Museum of the Arsenal at Venice, we were surprised to find numerous weapons of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries embodying the most recent English improvements in arms, such as revolving pistols, rifled muskets, and breech-loading cannon. The latter, embodying Sir William Armstrong’s modem idea, though in a rude form, had been fished up from the bottom of the Adriatic, where the ship armed with them had been sunk hundreds of years ago. Even Perkins’s steam-gun was an old invention revived by Leonardo da Vinci and by him attributed to Archimedes.*
[footnote…
Vieux-Neuf, i. 228; Inventa Nova-Antiqua, 742. …]
The Congreve rocket is said to have an Eastern origin, Sir William Congreve having observed its destructive effects when employed by the forces under Tippoo Saib in the Mahratta war, on which he adopted and improved the missile, and brought out the invention as his own.
Coal-gas was regularly used by the Chinese for lighting purposes long before it was known amongst us. Hydropathy was generally practised by the Romans, who established baths wherever they went. Even chloroform is no new thing. The use of ether as an anaesthetic was known to Albertus Magnus, who flourished in the thirteenth century; and in his works he gives a recipe for its preparation. In 1681 Denis Papin published his Traite des Operations sans Douleur, showing that he had discovered methods of deadening pain. But the use of anaesthetics is much older than Albertus Magnus or Papin; for the ancients had their nepenthe and mandragora; the Chinese their mayo, and the Egyptians their hachisch (both preparations of Cannabis Indica), the effects of which in a great measure resemble those of chloroform. What is perhaps still more surprising is the circumstance that one of the most elegant of recent inventions, that of sun-painting by the daguerreotype, was in the fifteenth century known to Leonardo da Vinci,*
[footnote…
Vieux-Neuf, i. 19. See also Inventa Nova-Antiqua, 803. …]
whose skill as an architect and engraver, and whose accomplishments as a chemist and natural philosopher, have been almost entirely overshadowed by his genius as a painter.* [footnote…
Mr. Hallam, in his Introduction to the History of Europe, pronounces the following remarkable eulogium on this extraordinary genius: — “If any doubt could be harboured, not only as to the right of Leonardo da Vinci to stand as ‘the first name of the fifteenth century, which is beyond all doubt, but as to his originality in so many discoveries, which probably no one man, especially in such circumstances, has ever made, it must be on an hypothesis not very untenable, that some parts of physical science had already attained a height which mere books do not record.” “Unpublished MSS. by Leonado contain discoveries and anticipations of discoveries,” says Mr. Hallam, “within the compass of a few pages, so as to strike us with something like the awe of preternatural knowledge.” …]
The idea, thus early born, lay in oblivion until 1760, when the daguerreotype was again clearly indicated in a book published in Paris, written by a certain Tiphanie de la Roche, under the anagrammatic title of Giphantie. Still later, at the beginning of the present century, we find Thomas Wedgwood, Sir Humphry Davy, and James Watt, making experiments on the action of light upon nitrate of silver; and only within the last few months a silvered copper-plate has been found amongst the old household lumber of Matthew Boulton (Watt’s partner), having on it a representation of the old premises at Soho, apparently taken by some such process.* [footnote…
The plate is now to be seen at the Museum of Patents at South Kensington. In the account which has been published of the above discovery it is stated that “an old man of ninety (recently dead or still alive) recollected, or recollects, that Watt and others used to take portraits of people in a dark (?) room; and there is a letter extant of Sir William Beechey, begging the Lunar Society to desist from these experiments, as, were the process to succeed, it would ruin portrait-painting.”
…]
In like manner the invention of the electric telegraph, supposed to be exclusively modern, was clearly indicated by Schwenter in his Delasements Physico-Mathematiques, published in 1636; and he there pointed out how two individuals could communicate with each other by means of the magnetic needle. A century later, in 1746, Le Monnier exhibited a series of experiments in the Royal Gardens at Paris, showing how electricity could be transmitted through iron wire 950 fathoms in length; and in 1753 we find one Charles Marshall publishing a remarkable description of the electric telegraph in the Scots Magazine, under the title of ‘An expeditions Method of conveying Intelligence.’ Again, in 1760, we find George Louis Lesage, professor of mathematics at Geneva, promulgating his invention of an electric telegraph, which he eventually completed and set to work in 1774. This instrument was composed of twenty-four metallic wires, separate from each other and enclosed in a non-conducting substance. Each wire ended in a stalk mounted with a little ball of elder-wood suspended by a silk thread. When a stream of electricity, no matter how slight., was sent through the wire, the elder-ball at the opposite end was repelled, such movement designating some letter of the alphabet. A few years later we find Arthur Young, in his Travels in France, describing a similar machine invented by a M. Lomond of Paris, the action of which he also describes.* [footnote…
“l6th Oct.l787. In the evening to M. Lomond, a very ingenious and inventive mechanic, who has made an improvement of the jenny for spinning cotton. Common machines are said to make too hard a thread for certain fabrics, but this forms it loose and spongy. In electricity he has made a remarkable discovery: you write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate; from which it appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance: within and without a besieged town, for instance; or for a purpose much more worthy, and a thousand times more harmless, between two lovers prohibited or prevented from any better connexion. Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful.”–Arthur Young’s Travels in France in 1787-8-9. London, 1792, 4to. ed. p. 65. …]
In these and similar cases, though the idea was born and the model of the invention was actually made, it still waited the advent of the scientific mechanical inventor who should bring it to perfection, and embody it in a practical working form.
Some of the most valuable inventions have descended to us without the names of their authors having been preserved. We are the inheritors of an immense legacy of the results of labour and ingenuity, but we know not the names of our benefactors. Who invented the watch as a measurer of time? Who invented the fast and loose pulley? Who invented the eccentric? Who, asks a mechanical inquirer,* [footnote…
Mechanic’s Magazine, 4th Feb. 1859. …]
“invented the method of cutting screws with stocks and dies? Whoever he might be, he was certainly a great benefactor of his species. Yet (adds the writer) his name is not known, though the invention has been so recent.” This is not, however, the case with most modern inventions, the greater number of which are more or less disputed. Who was entitled to the merit of inventing printing has never yet been determined. Weber and Senefelder both laid claim to the invention of lithography, though it was merely an old German art revived. Even the invention of the penny-postage system by Sir Rowland Hill is disputed; Dr. Gray of the British Museum claiming to be its inventor, and a French writer alleging it to be an old French invention.* [footnote…
A writer in the Monde says: –“The invention of postage-stamps. is far from being so modern as is generally supposed. A postal regulation in France of the year 1653, which has recently come to light, gives notice of the creation of pre-paid tickets to be used for Paris instead of money payments. These tickets were to be dated and attached to the letter or wrapped round it, in such a manner that the postman could remove and retain them on delivering the missive. These franks were to be sold by the porters of the convents, prisons, colleges, and other public institutions, at the price of one sou.” …]
The invention of the steamboat has been claimed on behalf of Blasco de Garay, a Spaniard, Papin, a Frenchman, Jonathan Hulls, an Englishman, and Patrick Miller of Dalswinton, a Scotchman. The invention of the spinning machine has been variously attributed to Paul, Wyatt, Hargreaves, Higley, and Arkwright. The invention of the balance-spring was claimed by Huyghens, a Dutchman, Hautefeuille, a Frenchman, and Hooke, an Englishman. There is scarcely a point of detail in the locomotive but is the subject of dispute. Thus the invention of the blast-pipe is claimed for Trevithick, George Stephenson, Goldsworthy Gurney, and Timothy Hackworth; that of the tubular boiler by Seguin, Stevens, Booth, and W. H. James; that of the link-motion by John Gray, Hugh Williams, and Robert Stephenson.
Indeed many inventions appear to be coincident. A number of minds are working at the same time in the same track, with the object of supplying some want generally felt; and, guided by the same experience, they not unfrequently arrive at like results. It has sometimes happened that the inventors have been separated by great distances, so that piracy on the part of either was impossible. Thus Hadley and Godfrey almost simultaneously invented the quadrant, the one in London, the other in Philadelphia; and the process of electrotyping was invented at the same time by Mr. Spencer, a working chemist at Liverpool, and by Professor Jacobi at St. Petersburg. The safety-lamp was a coincident invention, made about the same time by Sir Humphry Davy and George Stephenson; and perhaps a still more remarkable instance of a coincident discovery was that of the planet Neptune by Leverrier at Paris, and by Adams at Cambridge.
It is always difficult to apportion the due share of merit which belongs to mechanical inventors, who are accustomed to work upon each other’s hints and suggestions, as well as by their own experience. Some idea of this difficulty may be formed from the fact that, in the course of our investigations as to the origin of the planing machine–one of the most useful of modern tools–we have found that it has been claimed on behalf of six inventors–Fox of Derby, Roberts of Manchester, Matthew Murray of Leeds, Spring of Aberdeen, Clement and George Rennie of London; and there may be other claimants of whom we have not yet heard. But most mechanical inventions are of a very composite character, and are led up to by the labour and the study of a long succession of workers. Thus Savary and Newcomen led up to Watt; Cugnot, Murdock, and Trevithick to the Stephensons; and Maudslay to Clement, Roberts, Nasmyth, Whitworth, and many more mechanical inventors. There is scarcely a process in the arts but has in like manner engaged mind after mind in bringing it to perfection. “There is nothing,” says Mr. Hawkshaw, “really worth having that man has obtained, that has not been the result of a combined and gradual process of investigation. A gifted individual comes across some old footmark, stumbles on a chain of previous research and inquiry. He meets, for instance, with a machine, the result of much previous labour; he modifies it, pulls it to pieces, constructs and reconstructs it, and by further trial and experiment he arrives at the long sought-for result.”*
[footnote…
Inaugural Address delivered before the Institution of Civil Engineers, l4th Jan. 1862.
…]
But the making of the invention is not the sole difficulty. It is one thing to invent, said Sir Marc Brunel, and another thing to make the invention work. Thus when Watt, after long labour and study, had brought his invention to completion, he encountered an obstacle which has stood in the way of other inventors, and for a time prevented the introduction of their improvements, if not led to their being laid aside and abandoned. This was the circumstance that the machine projected was so much in advance of the mechanical capability of the age that it was with the greatest difficulty it could be executed. When labouring upon his invention at Glasgow, Watt was baffled and thrown into despair by the clumsiness and incompetency of his workmen. Writing to Dr. Roebuck on one occasion, he said, “You ask what is the principal hindrance in erecting engines? It is always the smith-work.” His first cylinder was made by a whitesmith, of hammered iron soldered together, but having used quicksilver to keep the cylinder air-tight, it dropped through the inequalities into the interior, and “played the devil with the solder.” Yet, inefficient though the whitesmith was, Watt could ill spare him, and we find him writing to Dr. Roebuck almost in despair, saying, “My old white-iron man is dead!” feeling his loss to be almost irreparable. His next cylinder was cast and bored at Carron, but it was so untrue that it proved next to useless. The piston could not be kept steam tight, notwithstanding the various expedients which were adopted of stuffing it with paper, cork, putty, pasteboard, and old hat. Even after Watt had removed to Birmingham, and he had the assistance of Boulton’s best workmen, Smeaton expressed the opinion, when he saw the engine at work, that notwithstanding the excellence of the invention, it could never be brought into general use because of the difficulty of getting its various parts manufactured with sufficient precision. For a long time we find Watt, in his letters, complaining to his partner of the failure of his engines through “villainous bad workmanship.” Sometimes the cylinders, when cast, were found to be more than an eighth of an inch wider at one end than the other; and under such circumstances it was impossible the engine could act with precision. Yet better work could not be had. First-rate workmen in machinery did not as yet exist; they were only in process of education. Nearly everything had to be done by hand. The tools used were of a very imperfect kind. A few ill-constructed lathes, with some drills and boring-machines of a rude sort, constituted the principal furniture of the workshop. Years after, when Brunel invented his block-machines, considerable time elapsed before he could find competent mechanics to construct them, and even after they had been constructed he had equal difficulty in finding competent hands to work them.*
[footnote…
BEAMISH’S Memoir of Sir I. M. Brunel, 79, 80. …]
Watt endeavoured to remedy the defect by keeping certain sets of workmen to special classes of work, allowing them to do nothing else. Fathers were induced to bring up their sons at the same bench with themselves, and initiate them in the dexterity which they had acquired by experience; and at Soho it was not unusual for the same precise line of work to be followed by members of the same family for three generations. In this way as great a degree of accuracy of a mechanical kind was arrived at was practicable under the circumstances. But notwithstanding all this care, accuracy of fitting could not be secured so long as the manufacture of steam-engines was conducted mainly by hand. There was usually a considerable waste of steam, which the expedients of chewed paper and greased hat packed outside the piston were insufficient to remedy; and it was not until the invention of automatic machine-tools by the mechanical engineers about to be mentioned, that the manufacture of the steam-engine became a matter of comparative ease and certainty. Watt was compelled to rest satisfied with imperfect results, arising from imperfect workmanship. Thus, writing to Dr. Small respecting a cylinder 18 inches in diameter, he said, “at the worst place the long diameter exceeded the short by only three-eighths of an inch.” How different from the state of things at this day, when a cylinder five feet wide will be rejected as a piece of imperfect workmanship if it be found to vary in any part more than the 80th part of an inch in diameter!
Not fifty years since it was a matter of the utmost difficulty to set an engine to work, and sometimes of equal difficulty to keep it going. Though fitted by competent workmen, it often would not go at all. Then the foreman of the factory at which it was made was sent for, and he would almost live beside the engine for a month or more; and after easing her here and screwing her up there, putting in a new part and altering an old one, packing the piston and tightening the valves, the machine would at length begot to work.* [footnote…
There was the same clumsiness in all kinds of mill-work before the introduction of machine-tools. We have heard of a piece of machinery of the old school, the wheels of which, when set to work, made such a clatter that the owner feared the engine would fall to pieces. The foreman who set it agoing, after working at it until he was almost in despair, at last gave it up, saving, “I think we had better leave the cogs to settle their differences with one another: they will grind themselves right in time!”
…]
Now the case is altogether different. The perfection of modern machine-tools is such that the utmost possible precision is secured, and the mechanical engineer can calculate on a degree of exactitude that does not admit of a deviation beyond the thousandth part of an inch. When the powerful oscillating engines of the ‘Warrior’ were put on board that ship, the parts, consisting of some five thousand separate pieces, were brought from the different workshops of the Messrs. Penn and Sons, where they had been made by workmen who knew not the places they were to occupy, and fitted together with such precision that so soon as the steam was raised and let into the cylinders, the immense machine began as if to breathe and move like a living creature, stretching its huge arms like a new-born giant, and then, after practising its strength a little and proving its soundness in body and limb, it started off with the power of above a thousand horses to try its strength in breasting the billows of the North Sea.
Such are among the triumphs of modern mechanical engineering, due in a great measure to the perfection of the tools by means of which all works in metal are now fashioned. These tools are themselves among the most striking results of the mechanical invention of the day. They are automata of the most perfect kind, rendering the engine and machine-maker in a great measure independent of inferior workmen. For the machine tools have no unsteady hand, are not careless nor clumsy, do not work by rule of thumb, and cannot make mistakes. They will repeat their operations a thousand times without tiring, or varying one hair’s breadth in their action; and will turn out, without complaining, any quantity of work, all of like accuracy and finish. Exercising as they do so remarkable an influence on the development of modem industry, we now propose, so far as the materials at our disposal will admit, to give an account of their principal inventors, beginning with the school of Bramah.
CHAPTER XI.
JOSEPH BRAMAH.
“The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks and decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot and oil.”–ISAAC TAYLOR, Ultimate Civilization.
The inventive faculty is so strong in some men that it may be said to amount to a passion, and cannot be restrained. The saying that the poet is born, not made, applies with equal force to the inventor, who, though indebted like the other to culture and improved opportunities, nevertheless invents and goes on inventing mainly to gratify his own instinct. The inventor, however, is not a creator like the poet, but chiefly a finder-out. His power consists in a great measure in quick perception and accurate observation, and in seeing and foreseeing the effects of certain mechanical combinations. He must possess the gift of insight, as well as of manual dexterity, combined with the indispensable qualities of patience and perseverance,–for though baffled, as he often is, he must be ready to rise up again unconquered even in the moment of defeat. This is the stuff of which the greatest inventors have been made. The subject of the following memoir may not be entitled to take rank as a first-class inventor, though he was a most prolific one; but, as the founder of a school from which proceeded some of the most distinguished mechanics of our time, he is entitled to a prominent place in this series of memoirs.
Joseph Bramah was born in 1748 at the village of Stainborough, near Barnsley in Yorkshire, where his father rented a small farm under Lord Strafford. Joseph was the eldest of five children, and was early destined to follow the plough. After receiving a small amount of education at the village school, he was set to work upon the farm. From an early period he showed signs of constructive skill. When a mere boy, he occupied his leisure hours in making musical instruments, and he succeeded in executing some creditable pieces of work with very imperfect tools. A violin, which he made out of a solid block of wood, was long preserved as a curiosity. He was so fortunate as to make a friend of the village blacksmith, whose smithy he was in the practice of frequenting. The smith was an ingenious workman, and, having taken a liking for the boy, he made sundry tools for him out of old files and razor blades; and with these his fiddle and other pieces of work were mainly executed.
Joseph might have remained a ploughman for life, but for an accident which happened to his right ankle at the age of 16, which unfitted him for farm-work. While confined at home disabled he spent his time in carving and making things in wood; and then it occurred to him that, though he could not now be a ploughman, he might be a mechanic. When sufficiently recovered, he was accordingly put apprentice to one Allott, the village carpenter, under whom he soon became an expert workman. He could make ploughs, window-frames, or fiddles, with equal dexterity. He also made violoncellos, and was so fortunate as to sell one of his making for three guineas, which is still reckoned a good instrument. He doubtless felt within him the promptings of ambition, such as every good workman feels, and at all events entertained the desire of rising in his trade. When his time was out, he accordingly resolved to seek work in London, whither he made the journey on foot. He soon found work at a cabinet-maker’s, and remained with him for some time, after which he set up business in a very small way on his own account. An accident which happened to him in the course of his daily work, again proved his helper, by affording him a degree of leisure which he at once proceeded to turn to some useful account. Part of his business consisted in putting up water-closets, after a method invented or improved by a Mr. Allen; but the article was still very imperfect; and Bramah had long resolved that if he could only secure some leisure for the purpose, he would contrive something that should supersede it altogether. A severe fall which occurred to him in the course of his business, and laid him up, though very much against his will, now afforded him the leisure which he desired, and he proceeded to make his proposed invention. He took out a patent for it in 1778, describing himself in the specification as “of Cross Court, Carnaby Market [Golden Square], Middlesex, Cabinet Maker.” He afterwards removed to a shop in Denmark Street, St. Giles’s, and while there he made a further improvement in his invention by the addition of a water cock, which he patented in 1783. The merits of the machine were generally recognised, and before long it came into extensive use, continuing to be employed, with but few alterations, until the present day. His circumstances improving with the increased use of his invention, Bramah proceeded to undertake the manufacture of the pumps, pipes, &c., required for its construction; and, remembering his friend the Yorkshire blacksmith, who had made his first tools for him out of the old files and razor-blades, he sent for him to London to take charge of his blacksmith’s department, in which he proved a most useful assistant. As usual, the patent was attacked by pirates so soon as it became productive, and Bramah was under the necessity, on more than one occasion, of defending his property in the invention, in which he was completely successful.
We next find Bramah turning his attention to the invention of a lock that should surpass all others then known. The locks then in use were of a very imperfect character, easily picked by dexterous thieves, against whom they afforded little protection. Yet locks are a very ancient invention, though, as in many other cases, the art of making them seems in a great measure to have become lost, and accordingly had to be found out anew. Thus the tumbler lock–which consists in the use of moveable impediments acted on by the proper key only, as contradistinguished from the ordinary ward locks, where the impediments are fixed– appears to have been well known to the ancient Egyptians, the representation of such a lock being found sculptured among the bas-reliefs which decorate the great temple at Karnak. This kind of lock was revived, or at least greatly improved, by a Mr. Barron in 1774, and it was shortly after this time that Bramah directed his attention to the subject. After much study and many experiments, he contrived a lock more simple, more serviceable, as well as more secure, than Barron’s, as is proved by the fact that it has stood the test of nearly eighty years’ experience,* [footnote…
The lock invented by Bramah was patented in 1784. Mr. Bramah himself fully set forth the specific merits of the invention in his Dissertation on the Construction of Locks. In a second patent, taken out by him in 1798, he amended his first with the object of preventing the counterfeiting of keys, and suspending the office of the lock until the key was again in the possession of the owner. This he effected by enabling the owner so to alter the sliders as to render the lock inaccessible to such key if applied by any other person but himself, or until the sliders had been rearranged so as to admit of its proper action. We may mention in passing that the security of Bramah’s locks depends on the doctrine of combinations, or multiplication of numbers into each other, which is known to increase in the most rapid proportion. Thus, a lock of five slides admits of 3,000 variations, while one of eight will have no less than 1,935,360 changes; in other words, that number of attempts at making a key, or at picking it, may be made before it can be opened. …]
and still holds its ground. For a long time, indeed, Bramah’s lock was regarded as absolutely inviolable, and it remained unpicked for sixty-seven years until Hobbs the American mastered it in 1851. A notice had long been exhibited in Bramah’s shop-window in Piccadilly, offering 200L. to any one who should succeed in picking the patent lock. Many tried, and all failed, until Hobbs succeeded, after sixteen days’ manipulation of it with various elaborate instruments. But the difficulty with which the lock was picked showed that, for all ordinary purposes, it might be pronounced impregnable.
The new locks were machines of the most delicate kind, the action of which depended in a great measure upon the precision with which the springs, sliders, levers, barrels, and other parts were finished. The merits of the invention being generally admitted, there was a considerable demand for the locks, and the necessity thus arose for inventing a series of original machine-tools to enable them to be manufactured in sufficient quantities to meet the demand. It is probable, indeed, that, but for the contrivance of such tools, the lock could never have come in to general use, as the skill of hand-workmen, no matter how experienced, could not have been relied upon for turning out the article with that degree of accuracy and finish in all the parts which was indispensable for its proper action. In conducting the manufacture throughout, Bramah was greatly assisted by Henry Maudslay, his foreman, to whom he was in no small degree indebted for the contrivance of those tool-machines which enabled him to carry on the business of lock-making with advantage and profit.
Bramah’s indefatigable spirit of invention was only stimulated to fresh efforts by the success of his lock; and in the course of a few years we find him entering upon a more important and original line of action than he had yet ventured on. His patent of 1785 shows the direction of his studies. Watt had invented his steam-engine, which was coming into general use; and the creation of motive-power in various other forms became a favourite subject of inquiry with inventors. Bramah’s first invention with this object was his Hydrostatic Machine, founded on the doctrine of the equilibrium of pressure in fluids, as exhibited in the well known ‘hydrostatic paradox.’ In his patent of 1785, in which he no longer describes himself as Cabinet maker, but ‘Engine maker’ of Piccadilly, he indicated many inventions, though none of them came into practical use,–such as a Hydrostatical Machine and Boiler, and the application of the power produced by them to the drawing of carriages, and the propelling of ships by a paddle-wheel fixed in the stern of the vessel, of which drawings are annexed to the specification; but it was not until 1795 that he patented his Hydrostatic or Hydraulic Press.
Though the principle on which the Hydraulic Press is founded had long been known, and formed the subject of much curious speculation, it remained unproductive of results until a comparatively recent period, when the idea occurred of applying it to mechanical purposes. A machine of the kind was indeed proposed by Pascal, the eminent philosopher, in 1664, but more than a century elapsed before the difficulties in the way of its construction were satisfactorily overcome. Bramah’s machine consists of a large and massive cylinder, in which there works an accurately-fitted solid piston or plunger. A forcing-pump of very small bore communicates with the bottom of the cylinder, and by the action of the pump-handle or lever, exceeding small quantities of water are forced in succession beneath the piston in the large cylinder, thus gradually raising it up, and compressing bodies whose bulk or volume it is intended to reduce. Hence it is most commonly used as a packing-press, being superior to every other contrivance of the kind that has yet been invented; and though exercising a prodigious force, it is so easily managed that a boy can work it. The machine has been employed on many extraordinary occasions in preference to other methods of applying power. Thus Robert Stephenson used it to hoist the gigantic tubes of the Britannia Bridge into their bed,*
[footnote…
The weight raised by a single press at the Britannia Bridge was 1144 tons.
…]
and Brunel to launch the Great Eastern steamship from her cradles. It has also been used to cut bars of iron, to draw the piles driven in forming coffer dams, and to wrench up trees by the roots, all of which feats it accomplishes with comparative ease.
The principal difficulty experienced in constructing the hydraulic press before the time of Bramah arose from the tremendous pressure exercised by the pump, which forced the water through between the solid piston and the side of the cylinder in which it worked in such quantities as to render the press useless for practical purposes. Bramah himself was at first completely baffled by this difficulty. It will be observed that the problem was to secure a joint sufficiently free to let the piston slide up through it, and at the same time so water-tight as to withstand the internal force of the pump. These two conditions seemed so conflicting that Bramah was almost at his wit’s end, and for a time despaired of being able to bring the machine to a state of practical efficiency. None but those who have occupied themselves in the laborious and often profitless task of helping the world to new and useful machines can have any idea of the tantalizing anxiety which arises from the apparently petty stumbling-blocks which for awhile impede the realization of a great idea in mechanical invention. Such was the case with the water-tight arrangement in the hydraulic press. In his early experiments, Bramah tried the expedient of the ordinary stuffing-box for the purpose of securing the required water tightness’ That is, a coil of hemp on leather washers was placed in a recess, so as to fit tightly round the moving ram or piston, and it was further held in its place by means of a compressing collar forced hard down by strong screws. The defect of this arrangement was, that, even supposing the packing could be made sufficiently tight to resist the passage of the water urged by the tremendous pressure from beneath, such was the grip which the compressed material took of the ram of the press, that it could not be got to return down after the water pressure had been removed.
In this dilemma, Bramah’s ever-ready workman, Henry Maudslay, came to his rescue. The happy idea occurred to him of employing the pressure of the water itself to give the requisite water-tightness to the collar. It was a flash of common-sense genius– beautiful through its very simplicity. The result was Maudslay’s self-tightening collar, the action of which a few words of description will render easily intelligible. A collar of sound leather, the convex side upwards and the concave downwards, was fitted into the recess turned out in the neck of the press-cylinder, at the place formerly used as a stuffing-box . Immediately on the high pressure water being turned on, it forced its way into the leathern concavity and ‘flapped out’ the bent edges of the collar; and, in so doing, caused the leather to apply itself to the surface of the rising ram with a degree of closeness and tightness so as to seal up the joint the closer exactly in proportion to the pressure of the water in its tendency to escape. On the other hand, the moment the pressure was let off and the ram desired to return, the collar collapsed and the ram slid gently down, perfectly free and yet perfectly water-tight. Thus, the former tendency of the water to escape by the side of the piston was by this most simple and elegant self-adjusting contrivance made instrumental to the perfectly efficient action of the machine; and from the moment of its invention the hydraulic press took its place as one of the grandest agents for exercising power in a concentrated and tranquil form.
Bramah continued his useful labours as an inventor for many years. His study of the principles of hydraulics, in the course of his invention of the press, enabled him to introduce many valuable improvements in pumping-machinery. By varying the form of the piston and cylinder he was enabled to obtain a rotary motion,* [footnote…
Dr. Thomas Young, in his article on Bramah in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, describes the “rotative principle” as consisting in making the part which acts immediately on the water in the form of a slider, “sweeping round a cylindrical cavity, and kept in its place by means of an eccentric groove; a contrivance which was probably Bramah’s own invention, but which had been before described, in a form nearly similar, by Ramelli, Canalleri, Amontons, Prince Rupert, and Dr. Hooke.
…]
which he advantageously applied to many purposes. Thus he adopted it in the well known fire-engine, the use of which has almost become universal. Another popular machine of his is the beer-pump, patented in 1797, by which the publican is enabled to raise from the casks in the cellar beneath, the various liquors sold by him over the counter. He also took out several patents for the improvement of the steam-engine, in which, however, Watt left little room for other inventors; and hence Bramah seems to have entertained a grudge against Watt, which broke out fiercely in the evidence given by him in the case of Boulton and Watt versus Hornblower and Maberly, tried in December 1796. On that occasion his temper seems to have got the better of his judgment, and he was cut short by the judge in the attempt which he then made to submit the contents of the pamphlet subsequently published by him in the form of a letter to the judge before whom the case was tried.*
[footnote…
A Letter to the Right Hon. Sir James Eyre, Lord Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, on the subject of the cause Boulton and Watt v. Hornblower and Maberly, for Infringement on Mr. Watt’s Patent for an Improvement of the Steam Engine. By Joseph Bramah, Engineer. London, 1797.
…]
In that pamphlet he argued that Watt’s specification had no definite meaning; that it was inconsistent and absurd, and could not possibly be understood; that the proposal to work steam-engines on the principle of condensation was entirely fallacious; that Watt’s method of packing the piston was “monstrous stupidity;” that the engines of Newcomen (since entirely superseded) were infinitely superior, in all respects, to those of Watt;– conclusions which, we need scarcely say, have been refuted by the experience of nearly a century.
On the expiry of Boulton and Watt’s patent, Bramah introduced several valuable improvements in the details of the condensing engine, which had by that time become an established power,–the most important of which was his “four-way cock,” which he so arranged as to revolve continuously instead of alternately, thus insuring greater precision with considerably less wear of parts. In the same patent by which he secured this invention in 1801, he also proposed sundry improvements in the boilers, as well as modifications in various parts of the engine, with the object of effecting greater simplicity and directness of action.
In his patent of 1802, we find Bramah making another great stride in mechanical invention, in his tools “for producing straight, smooth, and parallel surfaces on wood and other materials requiring truth, in a manner much more expeditious and perfect than can be performed by the use of axes, saws, planes, and other cutting instruments used by hand in the ordinary way.” The specification describes the object of the invention to be the saving of manual labour, the reduction in the cost of production, and the superior character of the work executed. The tools were fixed on frames driven by machinery, some moving in a rotary direction round an upright shaft, some with the shaft horizontal like an ordinary wood-turning lathe, while in others the tools were fixed on frames sliding in stationary grooves. A wood-planing machine*
[footnote…
Sir Samuel Bentham and Marc Isambard Brunel subsequently distinguished themselves by the invention of wood-working machinery, full accounts of which will be found in the Memoirs of the former by Lady Bentham, and in the Life of the latter by Mr. Beamish. …]
was constructed on the principle of this invention at Woolwich Arsenal, where it still continues in efficient use. The axis of the principal shaft was supported on a piston in a vessel of oil, which considerably diminished the friction, and it was so contrived as to be accurately regulated by means of a small forcing-pump. Although the machinery described in the patent was first applied to working on wood, it was equally applicable to working on metals; and in his own shops at Pimlico Bramah employed a machine with revolving cutters to plane metallic surfaces for his patent locks and other articles. He also introduced a method of turning spherical surfaces, either convex or concave, by a tool moveable on an axis perpendicular to that of the lathe; and of cutting out concentric shells by fixing in a similar manner a curved tool of nearly the same form as that employed by common turners for making bowls. “In fact,” says Mr. Mallet, “Bramah not only anticipated, but carried out upon a tolerably large scale in his own works–for the construction of the patent hydraulic press, the water-closet, and his locks–a surprisingly large proportion of our modern tools.”*
[footnote…
“Record of the International Exhibition, 1862.” Practical Mechanic’s Journal, 293.
…]
His remarkable predilection in favour of the use of hydraulic arrangements is displayed in his specification of the surface-planing machinery, which includes a method of running pivots entirely on a fluid, and raising and depressing them at pleasure by means of a small forcing-pump and stop-cock,–though we are not aware that any practical use has ever been made of this part of the invention.
Bramah’s inventive genius displayed itself alike in small things as in great–in a tap wherewith to draw a glass of beer, and in a hydraulic machine capable of tearing up a tree by the roots. His powers of contrivance seemed inexhaustible, and were exercised on the most various subjects. When any difficulty occurred which mechanical ingenuity was calculated to remove, recourse was usually had to Bramah, and he was rarely found at a loss for a contrivance to overcome it. Thus, when applied to by the Bank of England in 1806, to construct a machine for more accurately and expeditiously printing the numbers and date lines on Bank notes, he at once proceeded to invent the requisite model, which he completed in the course of a month. He subsequently brought it to great perfection the figures in numerical succession being changed by the action of the machine itself,–and it still continues in regular use. Its employment in the Bank of England alone saved the labour of a hundred clerks; but its chief value consisted in its greater accuracy, the perfect legibility of the figures printed by it, and the greatly improved check which it afforded.
We next find him occupying himself with inventions connected with the manufacture of pens and paper. His little pen-making machine for readily making quill pens long continued in use, until driven out by the invention of the steel pen; but his patent for making paper by machinery, though ingenious, like everything he did, does not seem to have been adopted, the inventions of Fourdrinier and Donkin in this direction having shortly superseded all others. Among his other minor inventions may be mentioned his improved method of constructing and sledging carriage-wheels, and his improved method of laying water-pipes. In his specification of the last-mentioned invention, he included the application of water-power to the driving of machinery of every description, and for hoisting and lowering goods in docks and warehouses,–since carried out in practice, though in a different manner, by Sir William Armstrong.*
[footnote…
In this, as in other methods of employing power, the moderns had been anticipated by the ancients; and though hydraulic machinery is a comparatively recent invention in England, it had long been in use abroad. Thus we find in Dr. Bright’s Travels in Lower Hungary a full description of the powerful hydraulic machinery invented by M. Holl, Chief Engineer of the Imperial Mines, which had been in use since the year 1749, in pumping water from a depth of 1800 feet, from the silver and gold mines of Schemnitz and Kremnitz. A head of water was collected by forming a reservoir along the mountain side, from which it was conducted through water-tight cast-iron pipes erected perpendicularly in the mine-shaft. About forty-five fathoms down, the water descending through the pipe was forced by the weight of the column above it into the bottom of a perpendicular cylinder, in which it raised a water-tight piston. When forced up to a given point a self-acting stop-cock shut off the pressure of the descending column, while a self-acting valve enabled the water contained in the cylinder to be discharged, on which the piston again descended, and the process was repeated like the successive strokes of a steam-engine. Pump-rods were attached to this hydraulic apparatus, which were carried to the bottom of the shaft, and each worked a pump at different levels, raising the water stage by stage to the level of the main adit. The pumps of these three several stages each raised 1790 cubic feet of water from a depth of 600 feet in the hour. The regular working of the machinery was aided by the employment of a balance-beam connected by a chain with the head of the large piston and pump-rods; and the whole of these powerful machines by means of three of which as much as 789,840 gallons of water were pumped out of the mines every 24 hours — were set in operation and regulated merely by the turning of a stopcock. It will be observed that the arrangement thus briefly described was equally applicable to the working of machinery of all kinds, cranes, &c., as well as pumps; and it will be noted that, notwithstanding the ingenuity of Bramah, Armstrong, and other eminent English mechanics, the Austrian engineer Holl was thus decidedly beforehand with them in the practical application of the principles of hydrostatics. …]
In this, as in many other matters, Bramah shot ahead of the mechanical necessities of his time; and hence many of his patents (of which he held at one time more than twenty) proved altogether profitless. His last patent, taken out in 1814, was for the application of Roman cement to timber for the purpose of preventing dry rot.
Besides his various mechanical pursuits, Bramah also followed to a certain extent the profession of a civil engineer, though his more urgent engagements rendered it necessary for him to refuse many advantageous offers of employment in this line. He was, however, led to carry out the new water-works at Norwich, between the years l790 and l793, in consequence of his having been called upon to give evidence in a dispute between the corporation of that city and the lessees, in the course of which he propounded plans which, it was alleged, could not be carried out. To prove that they could be carried out, and that his evidence was correct, he undertook the new works, and executed them with complete success; besides demonstrating in a spirited publication elicited by the controversy, the insufficiency and incongruity of the plans which had been submitted by the rival engineer.
For some time prior to his death Bramah had been employed in the erection of several large machines in his works at Pimlico for sawing stone and timber, to which he applied his hydraulic power with great success. New methods of building bridges and canal-locks, with a variety of other matters, were in an embryo state in his mind, but he did not live to complete them. He was occupied in superintending the action of his hydrostatic press at Holt Forest, in Hants–where upwards of 300 trees of the largest dimensions were in a very short time torn up by the roots,–when he caught a severe cold, which settled upon his lungs, and his life was suddenly brought to a close on the 9th of December, 1814, in his 66th year.
His friend, Dr. Cullen Brown,*
[footnote…
Dr. Brown published a brief memoir of his friend in the New Monthly Magazine for April, 1815, which has been the foundation of all the notices of Bramah’s life that have heretofore appeared. …]
has said of him, that Bramah was a man of excellent moral character, temperate in his habits, of a pious turn of mind,* [footnote…
Notwithstanding his well-known religious character, Bramah seems to have fallen under the grievous displeasure of William Huntington, S.S. (Sinner Saved), described by Macaulay in his youth as “a worthless ugly lad of the name of Hunter,” and in his manhood as “that remarkable impostor” (Essays, 1 vol. ed. 529). It seems that Huntington sought the professional services of Bramah when re-edifying his chapel in 1793; and at the conclusion of the work, the engineer generously sent the preacher a cheque for 8l. towards defraying the necessary expenses. Whether the sum was less than Huntington expected, or from whatever cause, the S.S. contemptuously flung back the gift, as proceeding from an Arian whose religion was “unsavoury,” at the same time hurling at the giver a number of texts conveying epithets of an offensive character. Bramah replied to the farrago of nonsense, which he characterised as “unmannerly, absurd, and illiterate that it must have been composed when the writer was “intoxicated, mad, or under the influence of Lucifer,” and he threatened that unless Huntington apologised for his gratuitous insults, he (Bramah) would assuredly expose him. The mechanician nevertheless proceeded gravely to explain and defend his “profession of faith,” which was altogether unnecessary. On this Huntington returned to the charge, and directed against the mechanic a fresh volley of Scripture texts and phraseology, not without humour, if profanity be allowable in controversy, as where he says, “Poor man! he makes a good patent lock, but cuts a sad figure with the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven!” “What Mr. Bramah is,” says S.S., “In respect to his character or conduct in life, as a man, a tradesman, a neighbour, a gentleman, a husband, friend, master, or subject, I know not. In all these characters he may shine as a comet for aught I know; but he appears to me to be as far from any resemblance to a poor penitent or broken-hearted sinner as Jannes, Jambres, or Alexander the coppersmith!” Bramah rejoined by threatening to publish his assailant’s letters, but Huntington anticipated him in A Feeble Dispute with a Wise and Learned Man, 8vo. London, 1793, in which, whether justly or not, Huntington makes Bramah appear to murder the king’s English in the most barbarous manner. …]
and so cheerful in temperament, that he was the life of every company into which he entered. To much facility of expression he added the most perfect independence of opinion; he was a benevolent and affectionate man; neat and methodical in his habits, and knew well how to temper liberality with economy. Greatly to his honour, he often kept his workmen employed, solely for their sake, when stagnation of trade prevented him disposing of the products of their labour. As a manufacturer he was distinguished for his promptitude and probity, and he was celebrated for the exquisite finish which he gave to all his productions. In this excellence of workmanship, which he was the first to introduce, he continued while he lived to be unrivalled.
Bramah was deservedly honoured and admired as the first mechanical genius of his time, and as the founder of the art of tool-making in its highest branches. From his shops at Pimlico came Henry Maudslay, Joseph Clement, and many more first-class mechanics, who carried the mechanical arts to still higher perfection, and gave an impulse to mechanical engineering, the effects of which are still felt in every branch of industry.
The parish to which Bramah belonged was naturally proud of the distinction he had achieved in the world, and commemorated his life and career by a marble tablet erected by subscription to his memory, in the parish church of Silkstone. In the churchyard are found the tombstones of Joseph’s father, brother, and other members of the family; and we are informed that their descendants still occupy the farm at Stainborough on which the great mechanician was born.
CHAPTER XII.
HENRY MAUDSLAY.
“The successful construction of all machinery depends on the perfection of the tools employed; and whoever is a master in the arts of tool-making possesses the key to the construction of all machines….. The contrivance and construction of tools must therefore ever stand at the head of the industrial arts.” –C. BABBAGE, Exposition of 1851.
Henry Maudslay was born at Woolwich towards the end of last century, in a house standing in the court at the back of the Salutation Inn, the entrance to which is nearly opposite the Arsenal gates. His father was a native of Lancashire, descended from an old family of the same name, the head of which resided at Mawdsley Hall near Ormskirk at the beginning of the seventeenth century. The family were afterwards scattered, and several of its members became workmen. William Maudslay, the father of Henry, belonged to the neighbourhood of Bolton, where he was brought up to the trade of a joiner. His principal employment, while working at his trade in Lancashire, consisted in making the wood framing of cotton machinery, in the construction of which cast-iron had not yet been introduced. Having got into some trouble in his neighbourhood, through some alleged LIAISON, William enlisted in the Royal Artillery, and the corps to which he belonged was shortly after sent out to the West Indies. He was several times engaged in battle, and in his last action he was hit by a musket-bullet in the throat. The soldier’s stock which he wore had a piece cut out of it by the ball, the direction of which was diverted, and though severely wounded, his life was saved. He brought home the stock and preserved it as a relic, afterwards leaving it to his son. Long after, the son would point to the stock, hung up against his wall, and say “But for that bit of leather there would have been no Henry Maudslay.” The wounded artilleryman was invalided and sent home to Woolwich, the headquarters of his corps, where he was shortly after discharged. Being a handy workman, he sought and obtained employment at the Arsenal. He was afterwards appointed a storekeeper in the Dockyard. It was during the former stage of William Maudslay’s employment at Woolwich, that the subject of this memoir was born in the house in the court above mentioned, on the 22nd of August, 1771.
The boy was early set to work. When twelve years old he was employed as a “powder-monkey,” in making and filling cartridges. After two years, he was passed on to the carpenter’s shop where his father worked, and there he became acquainted with tools and the art of working in wood and iron. From the first, the latter seems to have had by far the greatest charms for him. The blacksmiths’ shop was close to the carpenters’, and Harry seized every opportunity that offered of plying the hammer, the file, and the chisel, in preference to the saw and the plane. Many a cuff did the foreman of carpenters give him for absenting himself from his proper shop and stealing off to the smithy. His propensity was indeed so strong that, at the end of a year, it was thought better, as he was a handy, clever boy, to yield to his earnest desire to be placed in the smithy, and he was removed thither accordingly in his fifteenth year.
His heart being now in his work, he made rapid progress, and soon became an expert smith and metal worker. He displayed his skill especially in forging light ironwork; and a favourite job of his was the making of “Trivets” out of the solid, which only the “dab hands” of the shop could do, but which he threw off with great rapidity in first rate style. These “Trivets” were made out of Spanish iron bolts –rare stuff, which, though exceedingly tough, forged like wax under the hammer. Even at the close of his life, when he had acquired eminent distinction as an inventor, and was a large employer of skilled labour, he looked back with pride to the forging of his early days in Woolwich Arsenal. He used to describe with much gusto, how the old experienced hands, with whom he was a great favourite, would crowd about him when forging his “Trivets,” some of which may to this day be in use among Woolwich housewives for supporting the toast-plate before the bright fire against tea time. This was, however, entirely contraband work, done “on the sly,” and strictly prohibited by the superintending officer, who used kindly to signal his approach by blowing his nose in a peculiar manner, so that all forbidden jobs might be put out of the way by the time he entered the shop.
We have referred to Maudslay’s early dexterity in trivet-making–a circumstance trifling enough in itself–for the purpose of illustrating the progress which he had made in a branch of his art of the greatest importance in tool and machine making. Nothing pleased him more in his after life than to be set to work upon an unusual piece of forging, and to overcome, as none could do so cleverly as he, the difficulties which it presented. The pride of art was as strong in him as it must have been in the mediaeval smiths, who turned out those beautiful pieces of workmanship still regarded as the pride of our cathedrals and old mansions. In Maudslay’s case, his dexterity as a smith was eventually directed to machinery, rather than ornamental work; though, had the latter been his line of labour, we do not doubt that he would have reached the highest distinction.
The manual skill which our young blacksmith had acquired was such as to give him considerable reputation in his craft, and he was spoken of even in the London shops as one of the most dexterous hands in the trade. It was this circumstance that shortly after led to his removal from the smithy in Woolwich Arsenal to a sphere more suitable for the development of his mechanical ability.
We have already stated in the preceding memoir, that Joseph Bramah took out the first patent for his lock in 1784, and a second for its improvement several years later; but notwithstanding the acknowledged superiority of the new lock over all others, Bramah experienced the greatest difficulty in getting it manufactured with sufficient precision, and at such a price as to render it an article of extensive commerce. This arose from the generally inferior character of the workmanship of that day, as well as the clumsiness and uncertainty of the tools then in use. Bramah found that even the best manual dexterity was not to be trusted, and yet it seemed to be his only resource; for machine-tools of a superior kind had not yet been invented. In this dilemma he determined to consult an ingenious old German artisan, then working with William Moodie, a general blacksmith in Whitechapel. This German was reckoned one of the most ingenious workmen in London at the time. Bramah had several long interviews with him, with the object of endeavouring to solve the difficult problem of how to secure precise workmanship in lock-making. But they could not solve it; they saw that without better tools the difficulty was insuperable; and then Bramah began to fear that his lock would remain a mere mechanical curiosity, and be prevented from coming into general use.
He was indeed sorely puzzled what next to do, when one of the hammermen in Moodie’s shop ventured to suggest that there was a young man in the Woolwich Arsenal smithy, named Maudslay, who was so ingenious in such matters that “nothing bet him,” and he recommended that Mr. Bramah should have a talk with him upon the subject of his difficulty. Maudslay was at once sent for to Bramah’s workshop, and appeared before the lock-maker, a tall, strong, comely young fellow, then only eighteen years old. Bramah was almost ashamed to lay his case before such a mere youth; but necessity constrained him to try all methods of accomplishing his object, and Maudslay’s suggestions in reply to his statement of the case were so modest, so sensible, and as the result proved, so practical, that the master was constrained to admit that the lad before him had an old head though set on young shoulders. Bramah decided to adopt the youth’s suggestions, made him a present on the spot, and offered to give him a job if he was willing to come and work in a town shop. Maudslay gladly accepted the offer, and in due time appeared before Bramah to enter upon his duties.
As Maudslay had served no regular apprenticeship, and was of a very youthful appearance, the foreman of the shop had considerable doubts as to his ability to take rank alongside his experienced hands. But Maudslay soon set his master’s and the foreman’s mind at rest. Pointing to a worn-out vice-bench, he said to Bramah, “Perhaps if I can make that as good as new by six o’clock to-night, it will satisfy your foreman that I am entitled to rank as a tradesman and take my place among your men, even though I have not served a seven years’ apprenticeship.” There was so much self-reliant ability in the proposal, which was moreover so reasonable, that it was at once acceded to. Off went Maudslay’s coat, up went his shirt sleeves, and to work he set with a will upon the old bench. The vice-jaws were re-steeled “in no time,” filed up, re-cut, all the parts cleaned and made trim, and set into form again. By six o’clock, the old vice was screwed up to its place, its jaws were hardened and “let down” to proper temper, and the old bench was made to look so smart and neat that it threw all the neighbouring benches into the shade! Bramah and his foreman came round to see it, while the men of the shop looked admiringly on. It was examined and pronounced “a first-rate job.” This diploma piece of work secured Maudslay’s footing, and next Monday morning he came on as one of the regular hands.
He soon took rank in the shop as a first-class workman. Loving his art, he aimed at excellence in it, and succeeded. For it must be understood that the handicraftsman whose heart is in his calling, feels as much honest pride in turning out a piece of thoroughly good workmanship, as the sculptor or the painter does in executing a statue or a picture. In course of time, the most difficult and delicate jobs came to be entrusted to Maudslay; and nothing gave him greater pleasure than to be set to work upon an entirely new piece of machinery. And thus he rose, naturally and steadily, from hand to head work. For his manual dexterity was the least of his gifts. He possessed an intuitive power of mechanical analysis and synthesis. He had a quick eye to perceive the arrangements requisite to effect given purposes; and whenever a difficulty arose, his inventive mind set to work to overcome it.
His fellow-workmen were not slow to recognise his many admirable qualities, of hand, mind, and heart; and he became not only the favourite, but the hero of the shop. Perhaps he owed something to his fine personal appearance. Hence on gala-days, when the men turned out in procession, “Harry” was usually selected to march at their head and carry the flag. His conduct as a son, also, was as admirable as his qualities as a workman. His father dying shortly after Maudslay entered Bramah’s concern, he was accustomed to walk down to Woolwich every Saturday night, and hand over to his mother, for whom he had the tenderest regard, a considerable share of his week’s wages, and this he continued to do as long as she lived.
Notwithstanding his youth, he was raised from one post to another, until he was appointed, by unanimous consent, the head foreman of the works; and was recognised by all who had occasion to do business there as “Bramah’s right-hand man.” He not only won the heart of his master, but–what proved of far greater importance to him–he also won the heart of his master’s pretty housemaid, Sarah Tindel by name, whom he married, and she went hand-in-hand with him through life, an admirable “help meet,” in every way worthy of the noble character of the great mechanic. Maudslay was found especially useful by his master in devising the tools for making his patent locks; and many were the beautiful contrivances which he invented for the purpose of ensuring their more accurate and speedy manufacture, with a minimum degree of labour, and without the need of any large amount of manual dexterity on the part of the workman. The lock was so delicate a machine, that the identity of the several parts of which it was composed was found to be an absolute necessity. Mere handicraft, however skilled, could not secure the requisite precision of workmanship; nor could the parts be turned out in sufficient quantity to meet any large demand. It was therefore requisite to devise machine-tools which should not blunder, nor turn out imperfect work;– machines, in short, which should be in a great measure independent of the want of dexterity of individual workmen, but which should unerringly labour in their prescribed track, and do the work set them, even in the minutest details, after the methods designed by their inventor. In this department Maudslay was eminently successful, and to his laborious ingenuity, as first displayed in Bramah’s workshops, and afterwards in his own establishment, we unquestionably owe much of the power and accuracy of our present self-acting machines.
Bramah himself was not backward in admitting that to Henry Maudslay’s practical skill in contriving the machines for manufacturing his locks on a large scale, the success of his invention was in a great degree attributable. In further proof of his manual dexterity, it may be mentioned that he constructed with his own hands the identical padlock which so severely tested the powers of Mr. Hobbs in 1851. And when it is considered that the lock had been made for more than half a century, and did not embody any of the modern improvements, it will perhaps be regarded not only as creditable to the principles on which it was constructed, but to the workmanship of its maker, that it should so long have withstood the various mechanical dexterity to which it was exposed.
Besides the invention of improved machine-tools for the manufacture of locks, Maudslay was of further service to Bramah in applying the expedient to his famous Hydraulic Press, without which it would probably have remained an impracticable though a highly ingenious machine. As in other instances of great inventions, the practical success of the whole is often found to depend upon the action of some apparently trifling detail. This was especially the case with the hydraulic press; to which Maudslay added the essential feature of the self-tightening collar, above described in the memoir of Bramah. Mr. James Nasmyth is our authority for ascribing this invention to Maudslay, who was certainly quite competent to have made it; and it is a matter of fact that Bramah’s specification of the press says nothing of the hollow collar,*
[footnote…
The words Bramah uses in describing this part of his patent of 1795 are these–“The piston must be made perfectly watertight by leather or other materials, as used in pump-making.” He elsewhere speaks of the piston-rod “working through the stuffing-box.” But in practice, as we have above shown, these methods were found to be altogether inefficient.
…]
on which its efficient action mainly depends. Mr. Nasmyth says–“Maudslay himself told me, or led me to believe, that it was he who invented the self-tightening collar for the hydraulic press, without which it would never have been a serviceable machine. As the self-tightening collar is to the hydraulic press, so is the steamblast to the locomotive. It is the one thing needful that has made it effective in practice. If Maudslay was the inventor of the collar, that one contrivance ought to immortalize him. He used to tell me of it with great gusto, and I have no reason to doubt the correctness of his statement.” Whoever really struck out the idea of the collar, displayed the instinct of the true inventor, who invariably seeks to accomplish his object by the adoption of the simplest possible means.
During the time that Maudslay held the important office of manager of Bramah’s works, his highest wages were not more than thirty shillings a-week. He himself thought that he was worth more to his master–as indeed he was,–and he felt somewhat mortified that he should have to make an application for an advance; but the increasing expenses of his family compelled him in a measure to do so. His application was refused in such a manner as greatly to hurt his sensitive feelings; and the result was that he threw up his situation, and determined to begin working on his own account.
His first start in business was in the year 1797, in a small workshop and smithy situated in Wells Street, Oxford Street. It was in an awful state of dirt and dilapidation when he became its tenant. He entered the place on a Friday, but by the Saturday evening, with the help of his excellent wife, he had the shop thoroughly cleaned, whitewashed, and put in readiness for beginning work on the next Monday morning. He had then the pleasure of hearing the roar of his own forge-fire, and the cheering ring of the hammer on his own anvil; and great was the pride he felt in standing for the first time within his own smithy and executing orders for customers on his own account. His first customer was an artist, who gave him an order to execute the iron work of a large easel, embodying some new arrangements; and the work was punctually done to his employer’s satisfaction. Other orders followed, and he soon became fully employed. His fame as a first-rate workman was almost as great as that of his former master; and many who had been accustomed to do business with him at Pimlico followed him to Wells Street. Long years after, the thought of these early days of self-dependence and hard work used to set him in a glow, and he would dilate to his intimate friends up on his early struggles and his first successes, which were much more highly prized by him than those of his maturer years.
With a true love of his craft, Maudslay continued to apply himself, as he had done whilst working as Bramah’s foreman, to the best methods of ensuring accuracy and finish of work, so as in a measure to be independent of the carelessness or want of dexterity of the workman. With this object he aimed at the contrivance of improved machine-tools, which should be as much self-acting and self-regulating as possible; and it was while pursuing this study that he wrought out the important mechanical invention with which his name is usually identified–that of the Slide Rest. It continued to be his special delight, when engaged in the execution of any piece of work in which he took a personal interest, to introduce a system of identity of parts, and to adapt for the purpose some one or other of the mechanical contrivances with which his fertile brain was always teeming. Thus it was from his desire to leave nothing to the chance of mere individual dexterity of hand that he introduced the slide rest in the lathe, and rendered it one of the most important of machine-tools. The first device of this kind was contrived by him for Bramah, in whose shops it continued in practical use long after he had begun business for himself. “I have seen the slide rest,” says Mr. James Nasmyth, “the first that Henry Maudslay made, in use at Messrs. Bramah’s workshops, and in it were all those arrangements which are to be found in the most modern slide rest of our own day,* [footnote…
In this lathe the slide rest and frame were moveable along the traversing-bar, according to the length of the work, and could be placed in any position and secured by a handle and screw underneath. The Rest, however, afterwards underwent many important modifications; but the principle of the whole machine was there. …]
all of which are the legitimate offspring of Maudslay’s original rest. If this tool be yet extant, it ought to be preserved with the greatest care, for it was the beginning of those mechanical triumphs which give to the days in which we live so much of their distinguishing character.”
A very few words of explanation will serve to illustrate the importance of Maudslay’s invention. Every person is familiar with the uses of the common turning-lathe. It is a favourite machine with amateur mechanics, and its employment is indispensable for the execution of all kinds of rounded work in wood and metal. Perhaps there is no contrivance by which the skill of the handicraftsman has been more effectually aided than by this machine. Its origin is lost in the shades of antiquity. Its most ancient form was probably the potter’s wheel, from which it advanced, by successive improvements, to its present highly improved form. It was found that, by whatever means a substance capable of being cut could be made to revolve with a circular motion round a fixed right line as a centre, a cutting tool applied to its surface would remove the inequalities so that any part of such surface should be equidistant from that centre. Such is the fundamental idea of the ordinary turning-lathe. The ingenuity and experience of mechanics working such an instrument enabled them to add many improvements to it; until the skilful artisan at length produced not merely circular turning of the most beautiful and accurate description, but exquisite figure-work, and complicated geometrical designs, depending upon the cycloidal and eccentric movements which were from time to time added to the machine.
The artisans of the Middle Ages were very skilful in the use of the