Henry Maudslay, famous as an inventor, had the same exquisite sense of form. When he executed a piece of work he was greatly indebted to the dexterity he had acquired as a blacksmith in early life. He used to say that to be a good smith you must be able to see in an iron bar the object you mean to get out of it with hammer and chisel, just as the sculptor sees the statue he intends to carve from a block of marble. Eyes and Hands Inform the Brain. Inventors and artists have in common a keen perception of form, an ability to confer form with skill and accuracy. Often the same man is at once inventor and artist. Of this class Leonardo da Vinci is the most illustrious example. Alexander Nasmyth, of Edinburgh, who invented the bow-string bridge, was an eminent painter of portraits and landscapes. His son, James Nasmyth, who devised the steam hammer and the steam pile-driver, tells us in his autobiography:-- “My father taught me to sketch with exactness every object, whether natural or artificial, so as to enable the hand accurately to reproduce what the eye had seen. In order to acquire this almost invaluable art, he was careful to educate my eye, so that I might perceive the relative proportions of objects placed before me. He would throw down at random a number of bricks, or pieces of wood representing them, and set me to copy their forms, proportions, lights and shadows. I have often heard him say that any one who could make a correct drawing in regard to outline, and also indicate by a few effective touches the variation of lights and shadows of such a group of model objects, might not despair of making a good and correct sketch of York Minster. My father was an enthusiast in praise of this _graphic language_, and I have followed his example. In fact it formed a principal part of my own education. It gave me the power of recording observations with a few graphic strokes of the pencil, and far surpassing in expression any number of mere words. This graphic eloquence is one of the highest gifts in conveying clear and correct ideas as to the forms of objects--whether they be those of a simple and familiar kind, or of some form of mechanical construction, or of the details of a fine building, or the characteristic features of a wide-stretching landscape. This accomplishment of accurate drawing, which I achieved for the most part in my father’s workroom, served me many a good turn in future years with reference to the engineering work which became the business of my life.”