Joseph Wickham Roe

“ Their preëminence lay not so much in novelty of design as in the standard of accuracy and quality of workmanship which they embodied. With unerring judgment, Whitworth had turned his attention first, to use his own words, “to the vast importance of attending to the two great elements in constructive mechanics,—namely, a true plane and power of measurement. The latter cannot be attained without the former, which is, therefore, of primary importance.... All excellence in workmanship depends upon it.” ”

“ Evans was certainly an independent, and probably the first, inventor of the high pressure steam engine, a type of engine which he saw was well suited to American pioneer conditions. He was interested in steam locomotion, and predicted the development of railways with singular accuracy.
The time will come when people will travel in stages moved by steam engines from one city to another almost as fast as birds fly—fifteen to twenty miles an hour. Passing through the air with such velocity—changing the scenes in such rapid succession—will be the most exhilarating, delightful exercise. ”

“ It is even kind to engineers like Watt, Fulton and Stephenson, who have conspicuously and directly affected society at large. But little is known, even among mechanics, of the men whose work was mainly within the engineering profession, and who served other engineers rather than the general public. The lives and the personalities of men like Maudslay, Nasmyth and Eli Whitney, can hardly fail of interest to the mechanic of today. They were busy men and modest, whose records are mainly in iron and steel, and in mechanical devices which are used daily with little thought of their origin. ”

“ The system of interchangeable manufacture is generally considered to be of American origin. In fact, for many years it was known in Europe as the “American System” of manufacture. If priority be assigned to the source which first made it successful, it is American; but the first suggestions of the system came from France. We have already seen that the French mechanics were the first to work upon many of the great mechanical improvements; but here, as in the case of the slide-rest and planer, they seem to have caught the idea only. It was left to others to make it a practical success. ”

“ The interchangeable system of manufactures and the general use of accurate working gauges, which were hardly known in England, developed rapidly in America. These, with the introduction of the turret, the protean cam, and precision grinding machinery, and the great extension of the process of milling, served in the next fifty years to transfer the leadership in machine-tool design from England to America. A visit to any one of the great machine shops in England, Germany or France will convince one that the leadership now rests with the American tool builders. ”

“ England, who seems to have blundered whenever she legislated on early American trade, made one more serious mistake. In 1785 Parliament passed a stringent law, with severe penalties, to stop the emigration of all mechanics and workmen in iron and steel manufactures, and to prevent not only the exportation of every description of tool, engine or machine, or parts of a machine used in making and working up iron and other materials, but even the models and plans of such machinery. ”

“ In 1850 Whitworth was, without doubt, the foremost tool builder in the world. He had introduced a standard of accuracy in machine tools unknown before, and so improved their design and workmanship that he dominated English tool practice for several generations. In fact, the very ascendency of Whitworth’s methods seems to have been an element in the loss of England’s leadership in tool building. Most of the progressive work for the next fifty years was done in America. ”

“ Besides work on the hammer and machine tools, Nasmyth made a number of inventions of interest. While still with Maudslay he invented the flexible shaft made of a coiled spring, and speaks with amusement at his finding the same idea in a dental engine many years later credited as an American invention. He invented the ball-and-socket joint for shafting hangers and also the single wedge gate valve. His steam piledriver, an adaptation of the steam hammer, was the invention in which he seems to have taken the most satisfaction. ”

“ Whatever may have been the reason, the rapid advance of the English machine-tool builders ceased about the middle of the last century, and they have made but few radical changes or improvements since that time. At about the same time the American engineers introduced a number of improvements of very great importance.
The great distance of America from England forced it into a situation of more or less commercial and [108] mechanical independence. While France and Germany were importing machine tools from England, America began making them and soon developed independence of design. ”

“ Soon after the first graduating machine was put into use, the vernier caliper, reading to thousandths of an inch, was brought out by Mr. Brown; the first was made as early as 1851. In the following year he applied the vernier to protractors. A writer, in speaking of the invention of the vernier caliper, says, “It was the first practical tool for exact measurements which could be sold in any country at a price within the reach of the ordinary machinist, and its importance in the attainment of accuracy for fine work can hardly be overestimated.” ”

“ Within a few years after the building of the Colt Armory, manufacturing at Hartford had taken a definite character. From that day to this it has centered almost wholly on high-grade products, such as guns, sewing machines, typewriters, bicycles, automobiles and machine tools. Naturally, during the past generation, the skilled mechanics of the city have attracted many new and important industries, only indirectly connected with the armory, which we cannot consider here.
In 1848 Christian Sharps invented his breech-loading rifle, and in 1851 a company was formed at Hartford to manufacture it. ”

“ An enormous production of cotton followed Whitney’s invention of the cotton gin in 1792, and the South, which had never been a manufacturing community, furnished both a source of supply and a rich market, easily accessible by coastwise trade. The beginnings of New England’s manufacturing industries are closely identified with the rise of the American cotton crop, and most of the first machine shops were developed to manufacture textile machinery. ”

“ From their long experience as tool builders, Warner and Swasey realized that strength and rigidity are quite as essential as accuracy of workmanship where great precision is required. The design of a large telescope carrying a lens weighing over 500 pounds at the end of a steel tube forty or sixty feet long, and weighing five or six tons, which must be practically free from flexure and vibration and under intricate and accurate control, becomes distinctly an engineering problem. ”

“ There were few skilled artisans in Russia and almost none available in the southern provinces—a Danish brass founder, an English watchmaker and two or three sergeants who could write and draw were all he had. This set Bentham at work on the problem of “transferring skill” by means of machines, so that unskilled workmen might be made to produce the same results as skilled labor.
While Bramah and Maudslay were working in London [24] on their metal-cutting tools for making locks, Bentham, in Russia, was thinking out substantially the same problem in woodworking machinery. ”

“ Like most of the early mechanics he had little or no education, and as soon as he was strong enough he began work as a laborer in a quarry near his home. His mechanical aptitude led him into odd jobs and he soon became known for his dexterity. He finally determined [60] to become a mechanic and worked in several shops in the neighborhood. He was employed for a time as pattern maker at John Wilkinson’s works at Bradley, and is one of the few links between Wilkinson, who made the first modern metal-cutting tool—his boring machine—and the later generation of tool builders. ”

“ No concentration on so large a scale exists elsewhere in the country. For example, in 1900, Pennsylvania produced but 54 per cent of the iron and steel, and Massachusetts but 45 per cent of the boots and shoes. Furthermore, there seems to be no serious tendency to dislodge it. While there is more competition from outside, its ascendency is nearly as marked today as it was a generation ago. Why should this small district, a thousand miles or more from its sources of raw material, far from its market, and without cheap coal or adequate water power, gain and hold this leadership? ”

“ CENTRAL NEW ENGLAND
At the close of the chapter on “Early American Mechanics” we referred to the spread of machinery building northward from Rhode Island to the Merrimac Valley and central Massachusetts. This by no means implies that all the northern shops were started by Rhode Island mechanics, but their influence is so strong as to be clearly seen; and here, as in Rhode Island, the early shops were closely identified with the textile industry.
One of the first and most influential of these was the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company. ”

“ Up to 1800 New England artisans supplied merely small local needs and there was little or no manufacturing in any modern sense; but from then on the development was so rapid that by 1850 New England was not only supplying the United States with most of its manufactured products, but was beginning to export machinery and tools to England, where machine tools originated. For five generations, American mechanics had little or no industrial influence on Europe, and then within fifty years they began to compete on even terms. ”

“ The industrial life of the United States is so vast that a comprehensive history of even a single industry, such as tool building, would run far beyond the limits of one volume. This book, therefore, is confined to the main lines of influence in tool building and to the personalities and cities which have been most closely identified with it. The later history of American tool building has never been written. ”

“ We have seen in a previous chapter that a close approach to the interchangeable system was made in the Portsmouth block machinery of Bentham and Brunel. This was rather an application of modern manufacturing principles than a specific case of interchangeable manufacture. The interchangeability of product obtained was incidental to good manufacturing methods, not a distinct object aimed at, and there does not seem to have been any system of gauging during the processes of manufacture, to insure maintaining the various parts within specified limits of accuracy. ”

“ Gleason was also a workman in the Colt Armory. He went to Rochester in 1865 and the works which he developed form the most important tool building interest in western New York. There have been “a good many starts there in tool building and almost as many finishes.” Mr. Gleason always said that but for the training and methods he had gained at Hartford he would have shared their fate. Like many others, his company began with a general line of machine tools but has come to specialize on one type of machine, bevel-gear cutters, of which they build a most refined type. ”

“ In 1825 the improvement of the water power at what is now Lowell was begun. Almost at the very beginning of this development work, a large machine shop was built and placed under the charge of Paul Moody, who was regarded as one of the foremost mechanics of his day and was an expert in cotton machinery. This shop was retained by the Water Power Company for nearly twenty years, when it was sold (1845) and reorganized as the Lowell Machine Shop under Burke’s leadership. It employed at times one thousand men, and became one of the most important shops in the whole Merrimac Valley. ”

“ The textile industries, the steam engine, railways, and the scores of industries they called into being, all called for better and stronger means of production. While the rapidity of the development was due partly to the pressure of this demand, a second element, that of cumulative experience, was present, and can be clearly traced. Wilkinson was somewhat of an exception, as he was primarily an iron master and not a tool builder, so his relationship to other tool builders is not so direct or clear. ”

“ Traveling with his father from time to time, he had good opportunities for meeting many distinguished engineers and of visiting the great iron works, the most famous of which was the Carron Iron Works. “The Carron Iron Works,” he writes, “are classic ground to engineers. They are associated with the memory of Roebuck, Watt, and Miller of Dalswinton. For there, Roebuck and Watt began the first working steam engine; Miller applied the steam engine to the purposes of navigation, and invented the Carronade gun. The works existed at an early period in the history of British iron manufacture. ”

“ Nevertheless he can use Tools, can devise Tools: with these the granite mountain melts into light dust before him; seas are his smooth highway, winds and fire his unwearying steeds. Nowhere do you find him without Tools; without Tools he is nothing, with Tools he is all. ”

“ It was decided to make a measuring machine which should be an original standard for measuring as well as a comparator. This machine, built in 1878, was largely the work of Mr. Beale. It has a measuring wheel graduated to read to ten-thousandths of an inch and a vernier reading to hundred-thousandths. There is also an adjustment which reads even finer than the famous “millionth dividing engine” of Whitworth. The basis of accuracy for the microscopic scale was a standard yard, which had been compared with the standards at Washington. ”

“ The Swiss are clever artisans, particularly in fine work, but they have excelled in personal skill, operating on a small scale, rather than in manufacturing. Germany has, under the Empire, developed splendid mechanics, but the principal machine tools had taken shape before 1870, when the Empire began. The history of English and American tool building, therefore, covers substantially the entire history of the art. ”

“ Whitney was a far better business man than Watt, but his [146] partner was not in any way the equal of Boulton. If he had been, the story of the cotton gin might have been different.
Whitney saw the futility of depending solely on patent rights and wisely turned his splendid talents to manufacturing; where, without patent protection of any kind, by methods then new, but which have since spread throughout the world, he built up a fortune. Someone has said that the besetting sin of mechanics is invention. ”

“ In 1822 Samuel Slater, Larned Pitcher and three others bought a little two-story building at what was then Goffstown, on the Merrimac River, and founded the great Amoskeag Manufacturing Company, and the city of Manchester, N. H. It is now known as the greatest textile mill in the world, but the company’s original charter was very broad, and, in addition to its other interests, the company operated for many years one of the largest and most influential machine shops in the country, where were built locomotives, engines, boilers, all kinds of textile machinery, machine tools and mill machinery. ”

“ A steam engine that will consume from one-quarter to one-half a cord of wood will drive a carriage 180 miles in twelve hours, with twenty or thirty passengers, and will not consume six gallons of water. The carriages will not be overloaded with fuel or water.... And it shall come to pass that the memory of those sordid and wicked wretches who oppose such improvements will be execrated by every good man, as they ought to be now. ”