A Splendid Record

For more than a hundred years, between 1770 and 1875, Great Britain was the chief source and centre of machine tool development in the world. The origin of nearly every advance or improvement in the equipment of engineering machine shops made in other countries, can be traced to the British inventor, either as an idea embodied partially in one form of tool or another, or an experiment abandoned because the need for developing it was not apparent at the time it was made.

At East Town Workshops.
First Diamond Crossing turned out of new Points and Crossing Shop at East Town.

That fact is too often ignored by those who institute comparisons between the progress shown in machine tool manufacture by the engineers of the United States or Germany, and those of Great Britain, during the past forty years. Originated and trained for the service of the engineering industry of the country, British machine tool manufacturers have always had a practical duty to perform which could not be put aside for the sake of engaging in doubtful experiments or attempts at cheap production. Others, less responsible, have made thousands of experiments which have issued in a few successes so spectacular in effect as to obscure both their numberless failures and the solid work done by British makers in the minds of many people.

Although the iron and steel parts of the machinery coming into use during the early years of the 18th century were shaped by the crude tools available, it was not till after the steam engine had begun to revolutionise manufacture that machine tool production becomes a recognised branch of industry. In his “Lives of the Engineers,” Samuel Smiles described the severe trials James Watt endured because of the lack of tools with which to shape the cylinders and pistons of his engines, and the almost total dearth of skilled workmen. In 1765, when erecting his first complete steam engine, the situation of the great inventor could be described thus: “The improvement of the cylinder and piston continued Watt's chief difficulty, and taxed his ingenuity to the utmost. At so low an ebb was the art of making cylinders that the one he used was not bored, but hammered, the collective mechanical skill of Glasgow being then unequal to the boring of a cylinder of the simplest kind; nor, indeed, did the necessary appliances for the purpose exist anywhere else.” Eleven years later, when the famous partnership of Boulton and Watt was entering upon its fruitful labours in Soho Foundry, Birmingham, the position was little better. “In organising the works at Soho,” says Dr. Smiles, “Boulton and Watt found it necessary to carry the division of labour to the page 42 farthest practicable point. There were no slide lathes, planing machines or boring tools, such as now render mechanical accuracy of construction almost a matter of certainty. Everything depended upon the individual mechanic's accuracy of hand and eye; and yet mechanics were generally then much less skilled than they are now. The way in which Boulton and Watt contrived partially to get over the difficulty was to confine their workmen to special classes of work, and to make them as expert as possible. By continued practice in handling the same tools and fabricating the same articles, they thus acquired great individual proficiency.”

Made At Addington Workshops.
(Photo, W. P. Hern.)
Side-chain links to the number of 4,525 made recently on the bull dozer machine at Addington Workshops.

Dr. Smiles, however, seems to have been imperfectly acquainted with the mechanical equipment of Soho Foundry. It is now known that James Watt improved the crude foot-lathe then in use for his own purposes, and invented a wall-planer and several other machine tools, but the sense of justice of the proud, sensitive Scottish genius had been so often hurt by pirating rivals stealing his inventions, that he entrusted the working of the most of his improved machine tools only to workmen sworn to secrecy. Consequently, the greatest mechanical genius of the age contributed very little directly to the progressive development of machine tools in Great Britain, and it is necessary to look elsewhere for record of the stages through which the present-day equipment of the machine shops was evolved.