With a true love of his craft, Maudslay continued to apply himself, as he had done whilst working as Bramah's foreman, to the best methods of ensuring accuracy and finish of work, so as in a measure to be independent of the carelessness or want of dexterity of the workman. With this object he aimed at the contrivance of improved machine-tools, which should be as much self-acting and self-regulating as possible; and it was while pursuing this study that he wrought out the important mechanical invention with which his name is usually identified--that of the Slide Rest. It continued to be his special delight, when engaged in the execution of any piece of work in which he took a personal interest, to introduce a system of identity of parts, and to adapt for the purpose some one or other of the mechanical contrivances with which his fertile brain was always teeming. Thus it was from his desire to leave nothing to the chance of mere individual dexterity of hand that he introduced the slide rest in the lathe, and rendered it one of the most important of machine-tools. The first device of this kind was contrived by him for Bramah, in whose shops it continued in practical use long after he had begun business for himself. "I have seen the slide rest," says Mr. James Nasmyth, "the first that Henry Maudslay made, in use at Messrs. Bramah's workshops, and in it were all those arrangements which are to be found in the most modern slide rest of our own day,[2] all of which are the legitimate offspring of Maudslay's original rest. If this tool be yet extant, it ought to be preserved with the greatest care, for it was the beginning of those mechanical triumphs which give to the days in which we live so much of their distinguishing character."