Mint, were among the enterprising and progressive 

 men of the day, and the conceivers and originators 

 of the Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania. I must not 

 forget to name Dr. Thomas P. Jones, afterwards Com- 

 missioner of Patents, and Dr. John K. Mitchell, who 

 were among the first to lecture before the members of 

 the Institute on applied mechanics and chemistry. 78 



I have referred to the small class that William Mason 

 gave instruction to in the use of instruments in mech- 

 anical drawing. The lessons were few, and he 

 crowded so much into them that he soon exhausted 

 himself. In the class I worked with were John C. 

 Trautwine, previous to his going into Strickland's 

 office, and while he was yet a pupil of Espy's; Wm. 

 Milnor Roberts, Solomon W. Roberts, Edward 

 Morris, (all well-known civil engineers); John Dahl- 

 gren, (world-wide known as the inventor of the cannon 

 named after him, and as commodore in charge of the 

 United States Navy Yard at Washington), all at that 

 time pupils of Joseph Roberts at the Friends' School, 

 4 North Fifth Street, Philadelphia. Among this little 

 band, of which I am alone the survivor, a life-long 

 intimacy and friendship existed. [20] 



It is hard for the machinist of the present day to 

 realize that, at comparatively so recent a period, 

 bedposts, legs, and rounds for the old-fashioned 

 Windsor chairs, spade handles, rolling-pins, and the 

 like, were turned on spring-pole lathes, operated by 

 a foot treadle, one-half the time being lost in the 

 backward motion of the piece being turned. Al- 

 though the wheel and crank attachment to the foot 

 treadle had been adopted for a Ions; time, and was 

 used by the better class of workmen, it was not until 

 two or three years previous to 1824 — the date at 

 which the Institute was organized — that the wooden 

 grooved treadle wheel, for cat-gut or raw-hide round 

 belts, gave place to the cast-iron wheel and flat belt. 

 This innovation was made by Isaiah Lukens, and 

 was followed by Mason and Tyler. These, wooden 

 crank or treadle wheels were constructed of segments 

 of hard wood, beech or mahogany, so arranged as to 



78 Merrick, Baldwin, Patterson, Jones, and Mitchell are 

 noticed in Dictionary of American Biography. Henry and Stephen 

 P. Morris were makers of iron and brass forgings and umbrella 

 frames (Henry Morris letter book, etc., 1822-1825, 4 vols, in 

 collections of Historical Society of Pennsylvania). John Agnew 

 continued building fire engines when the partnership of Merrick 

 and Agnew was dissolved in 1836; he died in 1872 (advertise- 

 ment in .-1. M'Elroy's Philadelphia Directory for 1840; Journal of 

 the Franklin Institute, 1872, vol. 95, pp. 214, 215). 



present the end grain of the wood to the periphery of 

 the wheel, the depth of the felloes being about 5 

 inches; width of face, say, 4 inches, admitting of 

 three grooves of the required diameters to change the 

 speed of the lathe mandrel without varying the speed 

 of working the foot treadle. To give weight to these 

 wheels to act as fly-wheels, and to counterbalance 

 the crank and treadle, rows of holes around the rim 

 on its sides were bored, and cast full of lead. As late 

 as 1828 the spring-pole lathe had not entirely gone 

 out of use for chair rounds and spade handles, nor 

 had small steam engines, now so extensively used, 

 taken the place of the big wheel turned by man- 

 power, for heavy lathe work, or to drive the grind- 

 stones and emery-wheels of the cutlers and surgical 

 instrument makers in the cities. 



It was about the year 1822 or 1823 that a Maudslay 

 slide-rest, then a new thing in England, found its 

 way to Philadelphia. 79 It was taken hold of and 

 greatly simplified by Rufus Tyler, who was at that 

 time making small iron shear foot-lathes, he having 

 adopted the steel mandrel, conical on its front bear- 

 ing, running in hardened steel collars, and also the 

 push-pitman to the treadle, instead of the ordinary 

 hooks (this was original with him). The lathes and 

 slide-rests of Mason and Tyler were certainly the 

 best tools made for sale at that time. 



Isaiah Lukens was chiefly engaged in making 

 town clocks, but found time, with never more than 

 the assistance of one or two men, to finish two or 

 three small lathes and an air-gun or two in the 

 course of a year, for which there were always ready 

 purchasers. He also got up a simple slide-rest. 

 To cut the screws for it he converted one of his little 

 iron-shear foot-lathes into a very effective slide 

 lathe, with gearing to cut screws of various pitches. 



The bed-plate of his slide-rest was wrought iron 

 forged with a drop stud or spindle that was turned 

 to fit in the ordinary rest-carrier, to take the place 

 of the common rest. The face of this bed-plate was 



70 Henry Maudslay (1771-1831), of London, is generally 

 credited with having introduced the slide-rest — which provides 

 a positive means of guiding a cutting tool with relation to the 

 work — into machine shops by designing and building for sale 

 a practical rest that was immediately and widely accepted. 

 The Maudslay design, although it had the necessary elements, 

 was yet groping toward the solution that now appears so 

 obvious, in which the rigidity of the rest is greatly increased 

 by reducing its height, resorting then to other and simpler 

 means for gaining the necessary height to reach the center of 

 the work. (See fig. 26.) 



54 



