cation and perseverance, one of his sons accompanied 

 us through the works, first taking us to the boring 

 machine on which the great cylinder was being bored. 

 Here I must confess to a feeling of great disappoint- 

 ment, for the cylinder struck me as a mere pigmy 

 compared with the cylinders of the North River and 

 Long Island Sound boats of that period. I have no 

 memorandum of its dimensions. It was for a short 

 stroke not much longer than its diameter. There were 

 at that time boats on the American rivers with con- 

 densing engines, whose cylinders would cover two of 

 the one on the boring machine placed one on top of 

 the other. 



The marine engines in the erecting shop were also 

 short stroke. The workmanship on them appeared to 

 be of the highest possible character. This astonished 

 me, after having seen the lathes and other machine 

 tools, none of which lacked in care or accuracy in 

 their construction, but totally inadequate for the 

 character of work they had to do, as to weight, 

 strength and firmness. The lathes were driven by 

 raw hide or catgvt round belts in grooved pulleys; 

 most of the lathes were of the single A shape bar 

 pattern, like the watch or clock makers' bowstring 

 lathe, most of the turning being done by hand-fed slide 

 rests. Some of these were of very large size, but all 

 mounted high and lacking in firmness, as compared 

 with the slide rests made by Rufus Tyler, of Phila- 

 delphia, nor could the lathes compare favorably with 

 those made by Tyler or Mason and Baldwin, of at 

 least six years previous to my visit. 



As a boy I had worked on a Maudslay single 

 mandrel ungeared lathe, with one of his slide rests 

 that had been imported as something extraordinary, 

 the lathe being driven by a great wheel with a man 

 at [a] handcrank. I have the impression that this 

 slide rest started both Tyler and Lukens to designing 

 their improved one, which, for solidity and firmness, 

 so increased the amount of work that the Maudslay 

 rest was laid aside and the lathe transferred to the 

 pattern shop as a light-running wood lathe long before 

 I went to England. Therefore I was much surprised 

 at finding that class of tools without any improvement 

 in daily use. 



I had been accustomed to see in our American 

 shops, although many of their lathes had wooden 

 shears with light cast-iron guide shears bolted on them, 

 the rests or tool carriers traversed by chain or pinion 

 in rack, with heavy suspended weight to hold them 

 firm on the guide shears, turning off shavings of more 

 than double the depth and feed of anything I saw 



doing in the Maudslay works. It did appear to me that 

 tools were not keeping up with the requirements of 

 the times, but I noticed under construction a heavy 

 double shear engine lathe, and two planers in use. 

 This was evidence that the proprietors were looking 

 towards saving manual labor. I thought if they could 

 see the festoons of great wrought-iron shavings from 

 the lathes of Rush and Muhlenburg, of Bush Hill, 

 Philadelphia, or of Kemble's West Point Works, New 

 York, as hung in their offices, it would spur them on 

 in that direction. [41] 



(Dec. 10th, 1895) In looking over some old papers 

 I have come across an old letter of mine from London 

 in November 1832, evidently written after visiting the 

 machine shops of Birmingham, Manchester, Mauds- 

 lay's and Donkin's of London, in which I say I have 

 not yet seen a lathe to equal the one we are building. 

 This no doubt refers to the lathe at Cardington for 

 turning drying cylinders for paper mills, which had a 

 swing to turn cylinders up to 6 feet diameter. This 

 fixes the date and shows that I must have planned and 

 had the work under way before going to England 

 which was in August 1832. [42] 



The first planers I had seen in successful operation 

 were at the shops of Sharp & Roberts, 147 Manchester, 

 and their lathes were far ahead of Maudslay's, where 

 the hand hammer, cold chisel and file were doing a 

 much larger percentage of the work. Large flat sur- 

 faces, such as valve faces and seats, long and accurate 

 guides or lathe shears, came from the cold chisel almost 

 as perfect as they now do from our planers. This was 

 explained on the principle of division of labor, men 

 working a life time with hammer and cold chisel. 

 When I took in my hand their heavy, short, stubby 

 cold chisels, their short, clumsy, broad-faced, short 

 handled hand hammers, I felt it would be impossible 

 for me to handle such tools with any prospect of 

 approximating their results; I would as soon expect to 

 reach them with the stone cutter's round wooden mal- 

 let. The evolution in form and make of such tools 

 had in America far outstripped England. 



On returning to the erecting shop we found a num- 

 ber of gentlemen standing around the marine engines 

 which Mr. Field was explaining to them. Lord 

 Brougham was pointed out to me, at his side Mr. 



147 Richard Roberts (1 789-1864), builder of perhaps the 

 earliest planing machine for iron, in 1817, and of a back-geared 

 lathe, about 1820. 



112 



