Maudslay’s standard of accuracy carried him beyond the use of ordinary calipers, and he had a bench micrometer of great accuracy which he kept in his own workshop and always referred to as “The Lord Chancellor.” It was about 16 inches long and had two plane jaws and a horizontal screw. The scale was graduated to inches and tenths of an inch; and the index disk on the screw to one hundred equal parts. Speaking from the standpoint of fifty years ago, Nasmyth says: “Not only absolute measure could be obtained by this means, but also the amount of minute differences could be ascertained with a degree of exactness that went quite beyond all the requirements of engineering mechanism; such, for instance, as the thousandth part of an inch.”[45] [45] _Ibid._, p. 150. Maudslay’s record, as left behind him in steel and iron, would give him a secure place in engineering history, but his influence as a trainer of men is quite as great. He loved good work for its own sake and impressed that standard on all in his employ. Clement, Roberts, Whitworth, Nasmyth, Seaward, Muir and Lewis worked for him, and all showed throughout their lives, in a marked way, his influence upon them. Other workmen, whose names are not so prominent, spread into the various shops of England the methods and standards of Maudslay & Field (later Maudslay, Sons & Field) and made English tool builders the leaders of the world for fifty years. J. G. Moon, who afterwards became manager of James Watt & Company of Soho, the successor of Boulton & Watt, was apprenticed to Maudslay, Sons & Field and gives the following picture of the shop at the zenith of its prosperity. There were not more than perhaps a dozen lathes in use there, with cast-iron box beds such as we now know; but nearly all the lathes had been constructed by the firm itself and were made without a bed, the poppet or back center and the slide-rest being supported on a wrought-iron triangular bar, varying in size from, say, 3-in. to 6-in. side. This bar was supported on cast-iron standards, and reached from the fixed lathe head to the length required of the “bed.” If the lathes were self-acting, there were two such triangular bars with the guide screw running between them. The advantage of these lathes was great, for if a large chuck job was on hand, the bars could be withdrawn from the fixed head, supported on standards, and anything that would miss the roof or swing in a pit beneath could be tackled.