NATURE 



337 



THURSDAY, AUGUST 9, 1883 



TWO " EMINENT SCO TSMEN " 

 fames Nasmytli, Engineer. An Autobiography. Edited 



by Samuel Smiles, LL.D. (London : Murray, 1S83.) 

 The Life of John Duncan, Scotch Wearer and Botanist, 



with Sketches of his Friends and Xotices of his Times. 



By William Jolly. (London : Kegan Paul and Co., 



1883.) 

 HJE do not know in what particular direction Dr. 

 » V Smiles has exercised his editorial functions in the 

 charming autobiography of Mr. Nasmyth. The"pruning- 

 knife " which the latter advised him to use freely was 

 surely not needed ; the inventor of the steam-hammer 

 gossips so delightfully about himself that we should have 

 been glad had he gone on to a much greater length. On 

 the other hand it is a pity that Mr. Jolly had not obtained 

 the services of some judicious editorial pruner. He him- 

 self has evidently not had the leisure to write briefly, and 

 his book is therefore a somewhat heterogeneous collection 

 of materials much in want of rearrangement and cutting 

 down. 



Mr. Nasmyth's autobiography, we venture to think, is 

 likely to become a classic in the section of literature to 

 which it belongs. The genial simplicity, the unconscious 

 and perfectly just self-appreciation with which the great 

 engineer and student of science talks of his career and 

 his work, enlists from the first the reader's sympathy and 

 interest. His father, Alexander Nasmyth, a painter of 

 high rank and the founder of the Scottish landscape 

 school, was himself a genius in mechanics ; and an atmo- 

 sphere of mechanical invention pervaded his happy home 

 in Edinburgh. He was one of the select party on board 

 Symington's steamer on Dalswinton Loch in 1788; and 

 among his fellow-passengers was Robert Burns, a fact 

 new to us. Mr. Nasmyth gives us a delightful sketch of 

 his father and his happy family and the simple Edin- 

 burgh life of the time. He himself was born in 1808, 

 and educated at the High School of Edinburgh. From 

 his earliest years he delighted in mechanical invention, 

 and was great at making " peeries " and toy cannon. He 

 naturally, as his father's son, learned the use of the 

 pencil, and insists strongly on the great value of drawing 

 to a mechanical engineer. He himself, throughout life, has 

 made almost daily use of his skill in this art, and by the 

 facility with which he could record his ideas and incipient 

 inventions in this form, saved himself much writing, and 

 preserved much that would otherwise have been lost. He 

 left the High School in 1820, wrrn only twelve years of 

 age, though afterwards he attended classes at Edinburgh 

 University. At this early period he says of himself : — 



" I was constantly busy ; mind, hands, and body were 

 kept in a state of delightful and instructive activity. When 

 not drawing, I occupied myself in my father's workshop 

 at the lathe, the furnace, or the bench. I gradually 

 became initiated into every variety of mechanical and 

 chemical manipulation. I made my own tools and con- 

 structed my chemical apparatus, as far as lay in my 

 power. With respect to the latter, I constructed a very 

 handy and effective blowpipe apparatus, consisting of a 

 small air force-pump, connected with a cylindrical vessel 

 of tin plate. By means of an occasional use of the handy 

 Vol. xxviii.— No. 719 



pump, it yielded such a fine steady blowpipe blast, as 

 enabled me to bend glass tubes and' blow bulbs for ther- 

 mometers, to analyse metals or mineral substances, or to 

 do any other work for which intense heat was necessary. 

 My natural aptitude for manipulation, whether in mecha- 

 nical or chemical operations, proved very serviceable 

 to myself as well as to others; and (as will be shown 

 hereafter) it gained for me the friendship of many dis- 

 tinguished scientific men." 



He had moreover taken part in really practical work in 

 some Edinburgh workshops, and at the age of seventeen 

 he was constructing small steam-engines and models for 

 illustrative purposes, and two years later he invented a 

 very efficient road steam-engine. The great event in 

 Nasmyth's early life, however, was his engagement in the 

 great engineering works of Henry Maudsley, of London, 

 in 1S29. Maudsley was, indeed, so impressed with what 

 he saw of the young Scotchman's intelligence, knowledge, 

 and skill, that he at once took Nasmyth into his con- 

 fidence as his personal assistant. In London, as in 

 Edinburgh, Mr. Nasmyth made many friends among 

 those whose friendship was best worth having ; through 

 Brougham, for instance, he became acquainted with 

 Faraday, whose friendship he retained to the end of the 

 latter' s life. 



In order that he might be able to live upon his rather 

 scanty wages, Nasmyth invented an ingenious cooking- 

 stove, a sketch of which he gives, and by means of which 

 he was able to cook a " capital dinner " at $d. Long 

 before this his attention had been given to the contrivance 

 of accurate cutting-tools, and one of the first things he 

 did for Maudsley was to construct a nut-cutting machine. 

 A visit to the north of England, in 1S30, one of the 

 objects of which was to see Stephenson's ,: Rocket," gave 

 him the first idea of settling ultimately in business for 

 himself in the neighbourhood of Manchester. And so 

 indeed he did in 1832, in a very small way, for his means 

 at the time were limited. Business rapidly increased, 

 and he had shortly to remove to new premises at Patri- 

 croft, where in 1836 the great Bridgewater Foundry W3S 

 in complete and efficient action. For twenty years after 

 this Mr. Nasmyth continued at the head of his constantly 

 growing establishment, adding to his inventions, and ex- 

 tending his operations at home and abroad. The result 

 was that at the early age of forty-eight years he felt 

 himself in the happy position to be able to retire entirely 

 from business and devote his life to those scientific and 

 artistic pursuits which had been to him a constant source 

 of pleasure. Indeed it was his full and accurate know- 

 ledge of the science of his art, combined with his native 

 insight and common sense, that enabled him to achieve 

 so many mechanical triumphs. 



Mr. Nasmyth naturally enters in considerable detail 

 into the history of the steam-hammer, with which his 

 name is so intimately associated. The conception and 

 completion of the invention seems to have been the work 

 of a very brief time. He was incited to it, so early as 

 1839, by the difficulty which Mr. Humphries, the engineer 

 who had charge of the construction of the Great Britain 

 steamship, found in finding forger powerful enough to 

 weld the paddle-shaft of that vessel. Mr. Humphries 

 wrote to Mr. Nasmyth on the subject, and, says the 

 latter :— 



" This letter immediately set me a-thinking. How was 



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