JAMES BRINDLEY. 55 



the proprietors were obliged to apply to Brindley to remedy 

 several blunders into which he had fallen, and give his advice 

 as to how the work should be proceeded in. Still they did 

 not deem it proper to dismiss their incapable projector, but, 

 the pressing difificulty overcome, would have had him by 

 whose ingenuity they had been enabled to get over it to 

 return to his subordinate place and work under the direc- 

 tions of the same superior. This Brindley positively refused 

 to do. He told them he was ready, if they would merely 

 let him know what they wished the machine to perform, to 

 apply his best endeavours to make it answer that purpose, 

 and that he had no doubt he should succeed, but he would 

 not submit to be superintended by a person whom he had 

 discovered to be quite ignorant of the business he professed. 

 This at once brought about a proper arrangement of matters. 

 Brindley's services could not be dispensed with; those of 

 the pretender who had been set over him might be so 

 without much disadvantage. The entire management of the 

 work, therefore, was forthwith confided to the former, who 

 completed it with his usual abihty in a superior manner. 

 He not only made important improvements, indeed, in many 

 parts of the machine itself, but even in the mode of prepar- 

 ing the separate pieces of which it was to be composed. His 

 ever active genius was constantly displaying itself by the 

 invention of the most beautiful and economical simplifica- 

 tions. One of these was a method which he contrived for 

 cutting all his tooth and pinion wheels by machinery, instead 

 of having them done by the hand, as they always till then 

 had been. This invention enabled him to finish as much of 

 that sort of work in one day as had formerly been accom- 

 plished in fourteen. 



