While with Maudslay, Nasmyth designed and built an index milling machine for finishing the sides of hexagon nuts. After Maudslay’s death in 1831, he remained a few months with Mr. Field to finish some work in hand, and then left to start in business for himself. Nasmyth speaks in the kindliest terms of Mr. Field, and doubtless would have had more to say about him if his relationship with Maudslay had not been so close. Joshua Field was a man to be appreciated. He was a draftsman at the Portsmouth dockyard when the block machinery was being built, and showed so clear a grasp of the work in hand that Bentham had him transferred to the Admiralty at Whitehall. In 1804 he left the service and went to Maudslay’s, when he was at Margaret Street and employed about eighty men. He rose steadily, was taken into partnership in 1822, at the same time as Maudslay’s eldest son, and was the senior partner after Maudslay’s death when the firm was at the height of its long prosperity. He was one of those consulted in the laying of the Atlantic cable and in the designing of machinery for doing it. “Mr. Field was one of the founders of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the origin of which was very humble. About the year 1816, Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, who was then a pupil of the late Mr. Bryan Donkin, suggested to Mr. Field the idea of forming a society of young engineers, for their mutual improvement in mechanical and engineering science; and the earliest members were Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, Mr. William Nicholson Maudslay, and Mr. Joshua Field. To these three were shortly added Mr. James Jones, Mr. Charles Collinge, and Mr. James Ashwell. They met occasionally in a room hired for the purpose, and to them were soon attracted others having the same objects in view. Mr. Field was the first chairman of the Institution, being elected to that post on the sixth of January, 1818. Subsequently he became, in 1837, a vice-president, an office he filled until he was elected president in 1848, and in 1849, and he continued to the last to be an active member and warm supporter of the Institution.”[92] Mr. Field did everything in his power to give Nasmyth a start, allowing him to make the castings for some machine tools which he proposed to finish later for use in his own plant. [92] Memoir, in “Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers,” Vol. XXIII, p. 491. 1863.