Of the earlier tool builders, Maudslay was the greatest. He, more than any other, developed the slide-rest and he laid the basis for the lathe, planer and slotter. His powerful personality is brought out in Nasmyth’s autobiography written many years later. Nasmyth was a young boy, eager, with rare mechanical skill and one ambition, to go to London and work for the great Mr. Maudslay. He tells of their meeting, of the interest aroused in the older man, and of his being taken into Maudslay’s personal office to work beside him. It is a pleasing picture, the young man and the older one, two of the best mechanics in all England, working side by side, equally proud of each other. Joseph Clement came to London and worked for Bramah as chief draftsman and as superintendent of his works. After Bramah’s death he went to Maudslay’s and later went into business for himself. He was an exquisite draftsman, a fertile inventor, and had a very important part in the development of the screw-cutting lathe and planer. Joseph Whitworth, the most influential tool builder of the nineteenth century, worked for Maudslay and for Clement and took up their work at the point where they left off. Under his influence machine tools were given a strength and precision which they had never had before. Richard Roberts was another pupil of Maudslay’s whose influence, though important, was not so great as that of the others. We have an excellent example of what this succession meant. Nasmyth tells of the beautiful set of taps and dies which Maudslay made for his own use, and that he standardized the screw-thread practice of his own shop. Clement carried this further. He established a definite number of threads per inch for each size, extended the standardization of threads, and began the regular manufacture of dies and taps. He fluted the taps by means of milling cutters and made them with small shanks, so that they might drop through the tapped hole. Whitworth, taking up Clement’s work, standardized the screw threads for all England and brought order out of chaos. Some account of the growth of machine tools in the hands of these men will be given later. Enough has been said here to show the cumulative effect of their experience, and its part in the industrial advance of the first half of the nineteenth century. Similar successions of American mechanics will be shown later. Writing from the standpoint of fifty years ago, Smiles quotes Sir William Fairbairn: “‘The mechanical operations of the present day could not have been accomplished at any cost thirty years ago; and what was then considered impossible is now performed with an exactitude that never fails to accomplish the end in view.’ For this we are mainly indebted to the almost creative power of modern machine tools, and the facilities which they present for the production and reproduction of other machines.”[11] [11] Smiles: “Industrial Biography,” p. 399. CHAPTER II WILKINSON AND BRAMAH