Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool MakersSmiles, Samuel
History
Industrial Biography: Iron Workers and Tool Makers
Smiles, Samuel
Industrial arts -- Biography; Iron industry and trade -- Great Britain -- Biography
detected without the aid of a magnifier. The screw, which was sent for
exhibition to the Society of Arts, is still carefully preserved amongst
the specimens of Maudslay's handicraft at the Lambeth Works, and is a
piece of delicate work which every skilled mechanic will thoroughly
appreciate. Yet the tool by which this fine piece of turning was
produced was not an exceptional tool, but was daily employed in the
ordinary work of the manufactory.
Like every good workman who takes pride in his craft, he kept his tools
in first-rate order, clean, and tidily arranged, so that he could lay
his hand upon the thing he wanted at once, without loss of time. They
are still preserved in the state in which he left them, and strikingly
illustrate his love of order, "nattiness," and dexterity. Mr. Nasmyth
says of him that you could see the man's character in whatever work he
turned out; and as the connoisseur in art will exclaim at sight of a
picture, "That is Turner," or "That is Stansfield," detecting the hand
of the master in it, so the experienced mechanician, at sight of one of
his machines or engines, will be equally ready to exclaim, "That is
Maudslay;" for the characteristic style of the master-mind is as clear
to the experienced eye in the case of the finished machine as the
touches of the artist's pencil are in the case of the finished picture.
Every mechanical contrivance that became the subject of his study came
forth from his hand and mind rearranged, simplified, and made new, with
the impress of his individuality stamped upon it. He at once stripped
the subject of all unnecessary complications; for he possessed a
wonderful faculty of KNOWING WHAT TO DO WITHOUT--the result of his
clearness of insight into mechanical adaptations, and the accurate and
well-defined notions he had formed of the precise object to be
accomplished. "Every member or separate machine in the system of
block-machinery," says Mr. Nasmyth, "is full of Maudslay's presence;
and in that machinery, as constructed by him, is to be found the parent
of every engineering tool by the aid of which we are now achieving such
great things in mechanical construction. To the tools of which
Maudslay furnished the prototypes are we mainly indebted for the
perfection of our textile machinery, our locomotives, our marine
engines, and the various implements of art, of agriculture, and of war.
If any one who can enter into the details of this subject will be at
the pains to analyse, if I may so term it, the machinery of our modern
engineering workshops, he will find in all of them the strongly-marked
features of Maudslay's parent machine, the slide rest and slide
system--whether it be a planing machine, a slotting machine, a
slide-lathe, or any other of the wonderful tools which are now enabling
us to accomplish so much in mechanism."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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