In the previous chapter it was stated that John Wilkinson, of Bersham, made the steam engine commercially possible by first boring Watt’s cylinders with the degree of accuracy necessary, and that his boring machine was probably the first metal-cutting tool capable of doing large work with anything like modern accuracy. Although Wilkinson was not primarily a tool builder but an iron master, this achievement alone is sufficient to make him interesting to the tool builders of today.

He was born in 1728. His father made his financial start by manufacturing a crimping iron for ironing the fancy ruffles of the day. John Wilkinson first started a blast furnace at Belston and later joined his father in an iron works the latter had built at Bersham, near Chester. By developing a method of smelting and puddling iron with coal instead of wood-charcoal, he obtained an immense commercial advantage over his rivals and soon became a powerful factor in the iron industry. Later, he built other works, notably one at Broseley, near Coalbrookdale on the Severn.

One of the important branches of his work was the casting and finishing of cannon. It was in connection with this that he invented the boring machine referred to. He bored the first cylinder for Boulton & Watt in 1775. Farey, in his “History of the Steam Engine,” says:

Wilkinson’s relations with Boulton & Watt became very intimate. He showed his confidence in the new engine by ordering the first one built at Soho to blow the bellows of his iron works at Broseley. Great interest was felt in the success of this engine. Other iron manufacturers suspended their building operations to see what the engine could do and Watt himself superintended every detail of its construction and erection. Before it was finished Boulton wrote to Watt:

This letter is interesting as showing Boulton’s clear grasp of the principles of manufacturing. Later, when Boulton & Watt were hard pressed financially, Wilkinson took a considerable share in their business and when the rotative engine was developed he ordered the first one. He consequently has the honor of being the purchaser of the first reciprocating and the first rotary engine turned out by Watt. Later, when Watt was educating his son to take up his work, he sent him for a year to Wilkinson’s iron works at Bersham, to learn their methods.

Fig. 7, taken from an old encyclopedia of manufacturing and engineering, shows the boring machine used for boring Watt’s steam cylinders.

On two oaken stringers SS, frames FF were mounted which carried a hollow boring bar A driven from the end. The cylinder to be bored was clamped to saddles, as shown. The cutters were carried on a head which rotated with the bar and was fed along it by means of an internal feed-rod and rack. In the machine shown the feeding was done by a weight and lever which actuated a pinion gearing with the rack R, but later a positive feed, through a train of gears operated by the main boring-bar, was used. Two roughing cuts and a finishing cut were used, and the average feed is given as ¹⁄₁₆ inch per revolution. While this machine may seem crude, a comparison with Smeaton’s boring machine, Fig. 1, will show how great an advance it was over the best which preceded it.

Wilkinson was a pioneer in many lines. He built and launched the first iron vessel and in a letter dated July 14, 1787, says:

In another letter written a little over a year later, he says:

In 1788 William Symington built and ran a steam-operated boat on Dalswinton Loch in Scotland, which was a small, light craft with two hulls, made of tinned sheet-iron plates.[17] It has been erroneously claimed that this was the first iron boat. It was at best the second. Although of no commercial importance, it is of very great historical interest as it antedated Fulton’s “Clermont” by many years.

Twenty-three years later, in 1810, Onions & Son of Broseley built the next iron boats, also for use upon the Severn. Five years later Mr. Jervons of Liverpool built a small iron boat for use on the Mersey. In 1821 an iron vessel was built at the Horsley works in Staffordshire, which sailed from London to Havre and went up the Seine to Paris.[18] Iron vessels were built from time to time after that, but it was fully twenty-five years before they came into general use.

With Abraham Darby, 3d, Wilkinson has the honor of having built, in 1779, the first iron bridge, which spanned the Severn at Broseley. This bridge had a span of 100 feet 6 inches, and a clear height of 48 feet, and is standing today as good as ever.[19] He invented also the method of making continuous lead pipe.

He was a man of great ability, strong and masterful. Boulton wrote of him to Watt:

There is a note of qualification in the last clause. With all his admirable qualities Wilkinson was not always amiable and he was in constant feud with the other members of his family. He became very wealthy, but his large estate was dissipated in a famous lawsuit between his heirs.

Forceful and able as Wilkinson was, another man, Joseph Bramah, living in London about the same time, had a much more direct influence on tool building. Bramah was a Yorkshire farmer’s boy, born in 1748, and lame.[21] As he could not work on the farm he learned the cabinet maker’s trade, went to London, and, in the course of his work which took him into the well-to-do houses about town, he made his first successful invention—the modern water-closet. He patented it in 1778 and 1783, and it continues to this day in substantially the same form. In 1784 he patented a lock, which was an improvement on Barron’s, invented ten years before, and was one of the most successful ever invented. For many years it had the reputation of being absolutely unpickable. Confident of this, Bramah placed a large padlock on a board in his shop window in Piccadilly and posted beneath it the following notice:

Many tried to open it. In one attempt made in 1817, a clever mechanic named Russell spent a week on it and gave it up in despair. In 1851 Alfred C. Hobbs, an American, mastered it and won the money. He was allowed a month in which to work and the Committee of Referees in their report stated that he spent sixteen days, and an actual working time of fifty-one hours, in doing it. This gave Hobbs a great reputation, which he enhanced by picking every other lock well known in England at that time, and then showing how it was done.

This started up the liveliest kind of a controversy and gave everyone a chance to write to the Times. They all began first picking, then tearing each other’s locks. Headlines of “Love (Hobbs?) Laughs at Locksmiths,” “Equivocator” and other like terms appeared.[22]

It was finally recognized that any lock could be picked by a skillful mechanic with a knowledge of locks, if he were given time enough. The old Bramah lock, made, by the way, by Henry Maudslay himself, did not fare so badly. Hobbs had unmolested access to it for days with any tools he could bring or devise; and though he finally opened it, a lock probably sixty years old which could stand such an assault for fifty hours was secure for all ordinary purposes.[23]

When Bramah began manufacturing the locks he found almost immediately that they called for a better quality of workmanship than was available, with even the best manual skill about him. A series of machine tools had to be devised if they were to be made in the quantities and of the quality desired. He turned first to an old German in Moodie’s shop who had the reputation of being the most ingenious workman in London; but while he, with Bramah, saw the need, he could not meet it. One of his shopmates, however, suggested a young man at the Woolwich Arsenal named Henry Maudslay, then only eighteen years old.

Bramah sent for him and Maudslay soon became his right-hand man, and was made superintendent of the works at nineteen. The work of these two men in developing the tools needed laid the foundation for the standard metal-cutting tools of today. The most important improvement was the slide-rest. Nasmyth later said that he had seen the first one, made by Maudslay, running in Bramah’s shop and that “in it were all those arrangements which are to be found in the most modern slide-rest of our own day” (i.e., fifty years later). Other parts of the metal-cutting lathe also began to take shape; it has been said that parts of the lock were milled on a lathe with rotary cutters, and that the beginnings of the planer were made. How much of this work was Bramah’s and how much Maudslay’s it would be hard to say. Bramah was a fertile, clever inventor; but Maudslay was the better general mechanic, had a surer judgment and a greater influence on subsequent tool design.

About this time Bramah invented the hydraulic press. As he first built it, the ram was packed with a stuffing-box and gland. This gripped the ram, retarded the return stroke, and gave him a lot of trouble until Maudslay substituted the self-tightening cup-leather packing for the stuffing-box, an improvement which made the device a success.

Bramah’s restless ingenuity was continually at work. He invented a very successful beer-pump in 1797, the four-way cock, a quill sharpener which was in general use until quills were superseded by steel pens, and he dabbled with the steam engine. He was a bitter opponent of Watt and testified against him in the famous suit of Boulton & Watt against Hornblower. He maintained the superiority of the old Newcomen engines and said that the principle of the separate condenser was fallacious, that Watt had added nothing new which was not worthless, and that his so-called improvements were “monstrous stupidity.”

In 1802 Bramah obtained a patent for woodworking machinery second only in importance to that granted Bentham in 1791. Like Bentham, he aimed to replace manual labor “for producing straight, smooth, and parallel surfaces on wood and other materials requiring truth, in a manner much more expeditious and perfect than can be performed by the use of axes, saws, planes, and other cutting instruments used by hand in the ordinary way.” His tools were carried in fixed frames and driven by machinery. In his planing machine, one of which was running in the Woolwich Arsenal for fifty years, the cutter-head, which carried twenty-eight tools, was mounted on a vertical shaft and swept across the work in a horizontal plane. He used this same method in planing the metal parts for his locks, which corresponds, of course, to our modern face-milling. He provided for cutting spherical and concave surfaces and used his device for making wooden bowls.

In 1806 he devised an automatic machine which the Bank of England used many years in numbering their banknotes, eliminating error and saving the labor of many clerks.

Maudslay was in his employ from 1789 to 1797. He was getting as superintendent 30s. ($7.50) a week. A growing family and “the high cost of living” rendered this insufficient and he applied for more. He was refused so curtly that he gave up his position and started in for himself in a small workshop on Oxford Street in London. Later he took Field in as partner under the firm name of Maudslay & Field.

In 1813 Bramah engaged another man who later had a great influence, Joseph Clement. Clement soon became his chief draftsman and superintendent. Salaries had gone up somewhat by that time and he had an agreement for five years starting on the basis of three guineas a week with an advance of four shillings each year. At Bramah’s death not long after, his sons took charge of the business, and soon grew jealous of Clement’s influence. By mutual consent the contract was terminated and he went at once to Maudslay & Field as their chief draftsman. Later he, too, set up for himself and had an important part in the development of the screw-cutting lathe, the planer and standard screw threads. Whitworth was one of his workmen and Clement’s work on taps and dies formed the basis of the Whitworth thread.

Bramah died in 1814, at the age of sixty-six. He was a man of widely recognized influence, a keen and independent thinker, a good talker, and, though it might not appear from what has been said, a cheery and always welcome companion. He left a reputation for absolute business integrity and the quality of his workmanship was unrivaled until his later years, when he was equaled only by those he had himself trained. He gave the world some great and valuable devices and paved the way for others. His influence on modern tools can probably never be accurately judged, but Smiles’ tribute to him is as true today as when it was written, two generations ago:

Bramah had an invincible dislike for sitting for his portrait and consequently none exists. A death-mask was made by Sir Francis Chantrey, who executed the Watt statue in Westminster Abbey, but it was unfortunately destroyed by Lady Chantrey. The complete catalog of the National Portrait Gallery in London[25] gives Bramah’s name. The reference, however, directs one to Walker’s famous engraving of the “Eminent Men of Science Living in 1807-1808,” which shows about fifty distinguished scientists and engineers grouped in the Library of the Royal Institution. This engraving is the result of four years’ careful study. It was grouped by Sir John Gilbert, drawn by John Skill, and finished by William Walker and his wife. Bramah’s figure, No. 6, appears in this group, but with his back turned, the only one in that position. It is a singular tribute to Bramah’s influence among his generation of scientists that this picture would have been considered incomplete without him. As no portrait of him existed he was included, but with his face turned away. The figure was drawn in accordance with a description furnished by Bramah’s grandson, E. H. Bramah.

The engraving includes many other men of interest whose names are indicated. Some of them have already been considered; others, while famous as engineers, worked in fields other than the one we are considering.