[73] Apparently the modern belt conveyor. [74] “Memoir,” p. 579. Bodmer went to England for the first time in 1816 and visited all the principal machine shops, textile mills and iron works. He returned in 1824 and again in 1833, this time remaining many years. On his second trip he established a small factory for the manufacture of textile machinery at Bolton, in which was one of the first, if not the first, traveling crane.[75] At the beginning of his last and long residence in England, Bodmer appointed Sharp, Roberts & Company makers of his improved cotton machinery, which they also undertook to recommend and introduce. This arrangement was not successful, and a few years later, in partnership with Mr. H. H. Birley, Bodmer started a machine shop and foundry in Manchester for building machinery. [75] _Ibid._, p. 581. Nearly all of the machinery for the Manchester plant was designed and built by Bodmer himself and it forms the subject of two remarkable patents, granted, one in 1839 and the other in 1841.[76] The two patents cover in reality nearly forty distinct inventions in machinery and tools “for cutting, planing, turning, drilling, and rolling metal,” and “screwing stocks, taps and dies, and certain other tools.” “Gradually, nearly the whole of these tools were actually constructed and set to work. The small lathes, the large lathes, and the planing, drilling, and slotting machines were systematically arranged in rows, according to a carefully-prepared plan; the large lathes being provided, overhead, with small traveling cranes, fitted with pulley-blocks, for the purpose of enabling the workmen more economically and conveniently to set the articles to be operated upon in the lathes, and to remove them after being finished. Small cranes were also erected in sufficient numbers within easy reach of the planing machines, &c., besides which several lines of rails traversed the shop from end to end for the easy conveyance on trucks of the parts of machinery to be operated upon.”[77] There were, in addition to these, however, “a large radial boring machine and a wheel-cutting machine capable of taking in wheels of 15 feet in diameter, and of splendid workmanship, especially in regard to the dividing wheel, and a number of useful break or gap-lathes, were also constructed and used with advantage. It is especially necessary to mention a number of small, 6-inch, screwing lathes, which, by means of a treadle acting upon the driving gear overhead, and a double slide-rest--one of the tools moving into cut as the other was withdrawn,--screw cutting could uninterruptedly proceed both in the forward and in the backward motion of the toolslide, and therefore a given amount of work accomplished in half the time which it would occupy by the use of the ordinary means. Some of the slide-lathes were also arranged for taking simultaneously a roughing and finishing cut.”[78]