In the genealogical table shown in Fig. 5, Sir Samuel Bentham and Sir Marc I. Brunel are indicated as having originated the famous “Portsmouth Block Machinery,” which was built by Maudslay and which first gave him his reputation as a tool builder. While Bentham was primarily a naval administrator and Brunel a civil engineer, they were among the first to grasp the principles of modern manufacturing and embody them successfully. Both were men of distinction and each had an interesting career.

Samuel Bentham, Fig. 9, was a brother of Jeremy Bentham, the famous English publicist and writer on economics, and a step-brother of Charles Abbott, speaker of the House of Commons. He was born in 1757, went to the Westminster School, and later was a naval apprentice in the Woolwich Arsenal. His tastes and his training led him toward the administrative and constructive work of the navy, and for this he had the best education available at that time. He went to sea after a final year at the Naval College at Portsmouth; and in 1780, in consequence of his abilities, was sent by Earl Howe, then first Lord of the Admiralty, to visit the various ports of northern Europe. He went through the great ports of Holland and the Baltic, eastward to St. Petersburg, and was introduced at the Russian court by the British ambassador.

The Russians took to him kindly, as he was handsome, tall, and distinguished in manner, inspired confidence, and made and held friends. He was well received by the Empress Catherine, and soon became a favorite of Prince Potemkin. He traveled over a greater part of the empire from the Black Sea to the Arctic and as far east as China, examining mining and engineering works. On his return to St. Petersburg he fell in love with a wealthy heiress of the nobility. The parents objected; but though the empress, who was interested, advised an elopement, he gave it up as dishonorable and went away to Critcheff in southern Russia as a lieutenant-colonel of engineers in the Russian army. While there he took charge of Potemkin’s grossly mismanaged factories in order to put them on a sound basis, an undertaking suggestive of the twentieth-century efficiency engineer. In this he was not wholly successful. In 1787 he built and equipped a flotilla of ships, and in the following year distinguished himself in a naval battle with the Turks, in which John Paul Jones was also engaged. One of the vital elements in the fight was the use of the large guns built by Bentham, which fired shells for the first time in naval warfare. Nine Turkish ships were burned or sunk and 8000 men were killed or taken prisoners. For his part in this battle Bentham was knighted and made a brigadier-general.

There were few skilled artisans in Russia and almost none available in the southern provinces—a Danish brass founder, an English watchmaker and two or three sergeants who could write and draw were all he had. This set Bentham at work on the problem of “transferring skill” by means of machines, so that unskilled workmen might be made to produce the same results as skilled labor.

While Bramah and Maudslay were working in London on their metal-cutting tools for making locks, Bentham, in Russia, was thinking out substantially the same problem in woodworking machinery. He returned to England in 1791 and that year took out his first patent. Certain suggestions which he made to the Admiralty about the introduction of machinery into the dockyards led to his making an extended inspection of the dockyards throughout the kingdom, and he reported that immense savings were possible. The office of inspector general was created for him and authority given him to put his recommendations into effect.

For the next eighteen years he served the British navy. When he took hold it was honeycombed with inefficiency and worse. His business-like methods, his skill as an engineer and naval designer, and his fearless integrity were elements in the preparedness of the British navy in the Napoleonic wars. He was an intrepid enemy of red tape and graft and soon made cordial enemies; but he was a good fighter, with no weak spots in his armor, and it took many years to bring him down. In 1805 he was sent to St. Petersburg, and kept there on various pretexts for two years. It was remarked by some about the Admiralty office, that so high was their opinion of his talents they would be glad to give him £6000 ($30,000) a year if by that means they would never see him again. He returned in 1807 to find his office abolished and its functions transferred to a board, of which he was made a member at an increased salary. Here his power was diluted somewhat, but even this solution was too strong and he was retired on a pension in 1812. For the next fifteen years he lived in retirement in France. The years abroad softened the rancor of his enemies and from his return to England in 1827 until his death, Bentham was in frequent and friendly consultation with the navy officials. Bentham may well be considered as one of the first and greatest of “efficiency experts.”[26]

The patent of 1791 referred to is not important, but it was followed by another in 1793 in which was set forth the whole scheme of woodworking machinery which had been maturing in Bentham’s mind. This has been characterized as one of the most remarkable patents ever issued by the British Patent Office. More than fifty years after, one of the Crown judges said of it in summing up a case before him involving woodworking machinery, that “the specification of his (i.e., Bentham’s) patent of 1793 is a perfect treatise on the subject; indeed, the only one worth quoting that has to this day been written on the subject.”

Jeremy Bentham had revolutionized the prison system of England, and had introduced the system of labor in penitentiaries which has become an essential element in all modern penal systems. Woodworking was the most available field of work, but the greater part of the prisoners were of course unskilled, and Samuel Bentham was called upon to devise machines to meet the need. The two brothers established a factory and began making woodworking machinery for the prisons and dockyards.

The work for the dockyards soon took definite form. Pulley blocks formed one of the important supplies of the navy. A single full-rigged frigate used about 1500 and the Admiralty were purchasing at that time about 100,000 yearly. This formed a large business in itself and one in which the interchangeability that Bentham was continually urging was especially desirable. On Bentham’s recommendation, a government factory organized on a manufacturing basis and utilizing machinery had been begun at Portsmouth and a few machines of his design already installed, when Brunel, who had been working independently on block machinery, was introduced to him.

Marc Isambard Brunel, Fig. 10, was a Norman Frenchman, born in 1769, who was the despair of his father because he would not study to be a priest and would persist in drawing and in making things. As a family compromise he received a naval training and served as an officer for six years. In 1793, his ship being paid off, he was in Paris. His outspoken loyalty in one of the cafés on the very day when Louis XVI was sentenced to the guillotine brought down upon him the anger of the republicans present. He escaped in the confusion, spent the night in hiding, and leaving Paris early the next morning, made his way to Rouen. Here he hid for a time with M. Carpentier, the American consul, in whose home he met a young English girl whom he afterwards married. Six months later he sailed from Havre on a forged passport, under the nose of a frigate searching for suspects, and landed in New York only to find a French republican squadron lying in port. As he was personally known to many of the officers and in danger of being recognized, arrested and condemned as a deserter, he left the city at once and went to Albany in the vague hope of finding M. Pharoux, a friend who was undertaking the survey of a large tract of wild land in the Black River valley, east of Lake Ontario. Brunel found him by good chance, joined the party, and soon became its real leader. They showed the capacity, which the French have always had, of working in friendly relationship with the Indians, and their work was successfully accomplished. Fifty years later there were still traditions among Indians in the valley of a wonderful white man named “Bruné.”

Brunel remained in America for over five years and was naturalized as a citizen in 1796. During this time he was engaged on the Hudson-Champlain canal and various river improvements. He was a friend of Major L’Enfant, who planned the city of Washington and he submitted one of the competitive designs for the original Capitol. He also designed and built the old Park Theater in New York, which was burned in 1821. He was appointed chief engineer of New York, built a cannon foundry and had a part in planning the fortifications of the Narrows in New York harbor.

He was gay, refined and a favorite among the emigrés who enlivened New York society in the closing years of the eighteenth century. It was at Alexander Hamilton’s dinner table that the first suggestion of the block machinery came to him. He had been invited to meet a M. Delabigarre, who had just arrived from England. M. Delabigarre had been describing the method of making ship’s blocks and spoke of their high and increasing cost. Brunei listened with attention and then pointed out what he considered the defects of the method and suggested that the mortises might be cut by machinery, two or three at a time. The shaping machine he afterward used was conceived while he was at Fort Montgomery in the highlands of the Hudson. Brunel left America for England early in 1799 and remained in England the rest of his life. His marriage soon after his arrival to Miss Kingdom, the girl whom he had met at Rouen, doubtless gives the reason for this change.

Two months after reaching England, he took out a patent for a writing and duplicating machine and he also invented a machine for twisting cotton thread. Meantime he was working on the drawings for a complete set of block machinery, and by 1801 he had made a working model of the mortising and boring machines. He offered his plans to Fox & Taylor, who held the navy contract for blocks. Mr. Taylor wrote in reply that his father had spent many years developing their existing methods of manufacture and they were perfectly satisfied with them. He added, “I have no hope of anything better ever being discovered, and I am convinced there cannot.”

Brunel, through introductions brought from America, then laid his plans before Lord Spencer, of the Admiralty, and Sir Samuel Bentham. Bentham, as we have seen, was already working on the same problem. He saw at once the superiority of Brunel’s plans and, with the freedom from jealousy and self-interest which characterized his whole career, he recommended their adoption, with the result that Brunel was commissioned to build and install his machines.

About sixty years ago there was a sharp controversy over the origin of this Portsmouth machinery. Partisans of Bentham and Brunel each claimed the entire credit for all of it. The fact is that some of Bentham’s machines were used for the roughing out, but all the finishing work was done on Brunel’s, and there is little doubt that the definite plan of operations and all the more intricate machines were his. Bentham conceived the enterprise and had it well under way. His broad-minded and generous substitution of Brunel’s plans for his own was quite as creditable to him as the execution of the whole work would have been.

While Brunel was a clever and original designer, he was not a skilled mechanic. His plans called for a large number of refined and intricate machines which were wholly new and he no sooner began actual work than he felt the need of a mechanic capable of building them. Maudslay had just started in for himself and was working in his little shop on Oxford Street, with one helper. M. Bacquancourt, a friend of Brunel’s, passed his door every day and was interested in the beautiful pieces of workmanship he used to see from time to time in the shop window. At his suggestion Brunel went to Maudslay, explained to him his designs, and secured his help. There could hardly have been a better combination than these two men. Maudslay’s wonderful skill as a mechanic and his keen, practical intuition supplied the one element needed and together they executed the entire set of machines, forty-four in all.[27]

The machinery was divided into four classes.

First. Sawing machines, both reciprocating and circular, for roughing out the blocks.

Second. Boring, mortising, shaping and “scoring” machines for finishing the blocks.

Third. Machines for turning and boring the sheaves, for riveting the brass liner and finish-facing the sides. In the larger sizes small holes were drilled on the joint and short wire pins riveted in to prevent slipping between the liner and block.

Fourth. The iron pins on which the sheaves turned were hand forged in dies, turned and polished.

In addition to these there were several machines for forming “dead eyes,” or solid blocks without sheaves, used in the fixed rigging. A detailed description of the entire set would be too long. A brief description of one or two of the machines will serve to give some idea of the others.

Fig. 11 is taken from an old wood-cut of the mortising machine.[28] A model of it is shown in the background of the portrait of Brunel in the National Gallery, reproduced opposite page 26. A pulley and flywheel are connected by a cone clutch M to a shaft D. At the front end of this a crank and connecting-rod drive the reciprocating cutter head from a point a. The chuck carrying the block, movable forward and backward on guides, was operated by the feed screw R, a cam, and the ratchet motion shown. A system of stops and weighted levers on the side threw out the ratchet feed at the end of the cut, and the carriage was returned by hand, using the crank r. The crosshead had two guiding points, a double one below the driving point and a single one above it at F, and made 150 strokes per minute. The chuck could take either one or two blocks at a time.

Fig. 12 shows the shaping machine.[29] Ten blocks were chucked between two large, circular frames, the same working points being used as in the last machine. The principle of establishing and adhering to working points seems to have been clearly recognized. A cutter g was moved across the face of the blocks as they revolved, its motion being governed by the handles l and G and a former i. One side of each of the ten blocks was thus finished at a time. The blocks were then indexed 90° by revolving the bevel K, which turned the wormshafts d and rotated all the chucks simultaneously. The blocks were then faced again in their new positions and the operation continued until the four sides were finished. The strong curved bars at the top were provided to protect the workman in case one of the blocks should let go. As the momentum of the frame and blocks was considerable, a spring brake was provided between the bearing and bevel-gear to bring them to rest quickly.

Another well-designed machine “scored” the outside of the blocks for the ropes or straps. Two disks with inserted steel cutters grooved the blocks which were chucked on a swinging frame. The depth and path of cut were governed by a steel former against which a roller on the cutter shaft bore. In the metal working machines, under the fourth group, cutters were used in which a short, round bar of tempered steel was held by a binding screw in a holder of the lathe-tool type. From the sketch of it shown by Holtzapffel, the whole device might almost be used as an advertisement for a modern tool-holder for high-speed steel cutters.

Enough has been said to show that these machines were thoroughly modern in their conception and constituted a complete range of tools, each performing its part in a definite series of operations. By this machinery ten unskilled men did the work of 110 skilled workmen. When the plant was in full running order in 1808 the output was over 130,000 blocks per year, with a value of over $250,000, an output greater than that previously supplied by the six largest dockyards. It continued for many years to supply all the blocks used by the Royal Navy, and was in fact superseded only when wooden blocks themselves largely made way for iron and steel ones.

Brunel devised other woodworking tools, but none so successful as these. He started a mill at Battersea which burned down; his finances became involved and he was thrown into prison for debt. He was freed through a grant of $25,000 which friends secured from the government. His later work was in the field of civil engineering—the most famous work being the Thames tunnel. He was given the Legion of Honor in 1829, was knighted in 1841, and died in 1849.[30]

His son, Sir Isambard K. Brunel, was also one of the foremost engineers of England, a bridge and ship builder, railway engineer and rival of Robert Stephenson. At the age of twenty-seven he was chief engineer of the Great Western Railway, and built the steamer “Great Western” to run from Bristol to New York as an extension of that railway system. This was the first large iron ship, the first regular transatlantic liner, and the first large steamship using the screw propeller. Its success led to the building of the “Great Eastern” from his designs. This ship was about 700 feet long and for nearly fifty years was the largest one built. She was a disastrous failure financially and after a varied career, which included the laying of the first transatlantic cable, she was finally broken up. Brunel was a strong advocate of the broad gauge and built the Great Western system with a 7-foot gauge, which was ultimately changed to standard gauge. While a number of his undertakings were failures financially, his chief fault seems to have been that he was in advance of his generation.