Talk:Henry Maudslay

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[edit] Surname spelling OK as is

Google search indicates vacillation between Maudslay and Maudsley.
S.

The Joseph Wickham Roe reference spells it Maudslay. I suspect that several things are going on here: (1) There is another notable 19th-century Englishman, a psychiatrist, with nearly the same name, according to his article, Henry Maudsley. So any Google hits that represent correct spellings are going to bring up both of these men. (2) Google hits dredge up all kinds of things from all over the internet, including those endemic internet creatures, horrabel missspelings and stoopid drunkin typnig. Lumbercutter 02:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] And now for something completely different

Here's a link to some addition information and photos, but Wikipedia would like external editors to review since this is a link to our own webpage: http://www.brooklynmuseum.org/research/digital-collections/maudslay.php Brooklynmuseum 00:13, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I would like external editors to review it, too, because it's about a completely different person surnamed Maudslay. (My question for the external editors would be, how many seconds of scanning that page does it take before you realize it's about a completely different person? 3 seconds? 12? Certainly not much more than that.) Lumbercutter 02:48, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Inheritance

"The company was one of the most important British engineering manufactories of the nineteenth century" That's an understatement. Maudslay was the inventor of the modern machine tool, i.e. a tool that makes other tools. In other words, his tools made tools which made tools ... that eventually became today's machine tools. We can therefore say that any manufacturered gizmo, gadget or widget that you hold in your hand today was made by a tool that was made by a tool ... that was made by Maudslay. The entire industrial output of the world is directly descended from Maudslay's factory. Grendlegrutch 06:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First screw-cutting lathe?

Many screw-cutting lathes are documented prior to Maudslay's birth. Henry Hindley and Jesse Ramsden among others. How does he get to be considered first?

Is there a specific criteria for what constitutes a proper screw-cutting lathe (i.e. the prior inventions were used to make screws but are not the same class of machine)? Michael Daly 23:47, 20 September 2007 (UTC)

I think that you are correct in the latter point. In other words, screw-cutting lathes existed before Maudslay, but the industrial-era screw-cutting lathe began with him. Simplistic breezy bios of Maudslay (of which many pop up when you Google his name) say that Maudslay invented the slide-rest (which, they often don't bother to explain, superseded the practice of having the lathe operator hold the cutting tool in his hands against a stationary rest [the way wood-turning is still often done]). And they imply that the slide-rest alone was revolutionary. It seems that the basic concept of a slide-rest had already been invented over the centuries, but that Maudslay is the one who is credited with independently (re)inventing it at the right moment to create modern machine tools. (However, David Wilkinson (1771-1852) may have beaten him to it independently.) I am inferring, from what I can (a) remember from Wickham Roe 1916 and (b) find on the internet tonight, that Maudslay is the one who put together the concept of a leadscrew driving a slide-rest-style carriage through a set of change gears. But it is very frustrating because everyone gushes about how great his advancements to the lathe were, but few actually talk about exactly what they were. Wickham Roe 1916 is the place to look for the whole story. I seem to remember from when I read it about 5 years ago that the history of the leadscrew, and of the slide-rest, and of the concept of tying the two together with a geartrain (let alone change gears specifically) was clearly traced and I understood it. But at this point I can't remember those details. When I get around to unpacking my dead-tree copy I think I'll re-read it. In the meantime you can read it yourself for free here and more specifically at chapter IV here if you like, thanks to Google's book-digitizing efforts—it's one of the books from the New York Public Library that have already been digitized. Hope this helps! — Lumbercutter 02:24, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
PS—I seem to recall that Wickham Roe 1916 cites Smiles's Industrial Biography a lot (the latter is available for free on the web at the World Wide School). Their version is from the first edition (1863), according to the preface. — Lumbercutter 02:32, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I find articles that have stuff like this on the web:
Jesse Ramsden developed the first satisfactory screw-cutting lathe in 1770. Henry Maudslay's lathe was far superior to any of its predecessors and as such it became widely used. (Whitworth Society
It then goes on to gush over Maudslay. Most articles talk about Maudslay as if he was the only person to do it. I can't tease out the factor that differentiates Ramsden's machine from Maudslay's - I think it's like your first comment - industrial scale vs one shop. When I look at the drawing I have of Ramsden's, I see the bits that Maudslay had - leadscrew, moving tool-holder, geared hand-crank etc. The only real difference is that Maudslay's was on a rigid stand and Ramsden's appears to have been bolted to a workbench. I have been trying to determine whether Maudslay's was adjustable to "automatically" make different size screws or whether it pretty much worked with a fixed-pitch leadscrew and could only change the cutting tool to change diameter. One article suggested that the "real" screw-cutting lathes were fully adjustable.
This isn't the first article where I've been questioning multiple claims of a "first" or "last" or "greatest".
BTW - I recently found a book that stated that Hindley's was "stillborn". Not a strong claim for first in his case, I guess. Michael Daly 05:07, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
PS - I just found this site [1] that pretty much describes Maudslay's priority as being based on hero worship rather than historical fact. Michael Daly 05:25, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
  • Wow—that link is amazing. I'll have to read that whole thing sometime in the future when I have time to devote to it.
  • I think it's true that there is too much "first-ever" and "hero" mythology around inventors, and screw-cutting lathes are a good case study. Sometime in the future if I get around to studying this topic in-depth I will revamp this article to reflect those ideas.
  • Regarding your question about switching to different thread pitches: This is accomplished on all modern manual (non-CNC) lathes with the quick-change gear box, the predecessor of which was (non-quick) change gears that you had to swap on and off the leadscrew and headstock manually (they still make this set-up for economy's sake on some of the lowest-cost lathes). According to Wickham Row 1916:38, Ramsden may have been the first with this winning combination (leadscrew AND slide-rest AND change gears, all on one machine) in 1775 (Wickham Roe could not verify); but Maudslay was the first one who definitely got it right and spread it to the rest of the world (1800). Wickham Row 1916:38-40 is basically talking about this very topic at some length. Basically, to sum up in paraphrase, you need the leadscrew AND the slide-rest AND the change gears all on one machine to create a "real" ("modern"/"proper"/"non-primitive") screw-cutting lathe.
  • Thanks for prompting this discussion! Clearly we have a goal to work towards on Wikipedia, explaining this multi-person, multi-decade invention process in a proper amount of detail (which those breezy little web bios really get wrong!) and qualifying the "first-ever" claims.
— Lumbercutter 21:12, 21 September 2007 (UTC)
I created a page, screw-cutting lathe, after finding several references to it and needing it on another page I created on the dividing engine (my interests are in historical scientific instruments, esp. navigation and surveying). I'm a civil eng, not mech, so I'm short on knowledge on some of these machines - your comments and explanations are quite helpful. I'm trying to make sure these topics/articles all tie together. I don't like putting something like "Ramsden built the first highly reliable screw-cutting lathe to help him build a dividing engine" only to have most other pages claiming that Maudslay was the first and he was born the year Ramsden did it! I think I'd like to have any changes reflect what seems to be the case - Ramsden solved most of the problems, but Maudslay created a machine that could produce screws on an industrial scale - in volume and with high consistency. Being able to make a few high-quality screws a week and making thousands are two different things. Ramsden's purpose was not to make little machine screws to bolt his instruments together but make a highly accurate device based on gears (worm gear = screw) that could measure off the division of graduations on an instrument with exceptional accuracy and little human error. It's the dividing engine he's known for (and of course, the instruments he made with it). Michael Daly 21:51, 21 September 2007 (UTC)