Talk:Henry Maudslay

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)

There is more to this story, as covered nowadays in the article at Henry_Maudslay#Pronunciation_and_spelling. — ¾-10 01:51, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

Could someone please reference the actual pronunciation? "reduced /li/ terminal syllable as is typical..." Has no meaning unless you already know what a reduced terminal syllable is (may not be legit linguistic lingo), or already know how an 18th century Englishman pronounces Maudslay. So this is self-referential and not as useful as it could be. KeithLofstrom (talk) 02:16, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

There's nothing illegit about the words "reduced" (see vowel reduction and stress and vowel reduction in English) nor the words "terminal syllable" (see terminal and syllable). But your point (consider the target audience when choosing how to present the info) is a good one. I changed the paragraph to be more useful to a general audience. — ¾-10 20:53, 4 November 2012 (UTC)

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)

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)

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)

Regarding the "hero mythology", I think the issue is that a lot of Maudslay's contributions are harder to quantify by historians to an audience that may not have experience or know anything about machining or machine tools in general. It probably takes a machinist to truly appreciate the difference between a tool that can simply perform a task, and a tool that can perform that task well. The quality of much of Maudslay's workmanship was far ahead of his time, and he impressed this level of precision and engineering in all his machines and tools on his plethora of apprentices and followers- the overall effect being a considerable impact on the industrial revolution in Great Britain, and thus rest of the world. Of course it's not really a practical task to catalog and categorize all sorts of little effects Maudslay may have impressed upon the developing machine tool industry- and thus is difficult to historically remember his effects without the sense of unverifiable gushing. There was a good book I read, "A short history of machine tools" by Rolt that detailed contributions of Maudslay and many of his fellow craftsmen well, and I will have to find and maybe bring some more light to this article. With reference to the screw-cutting lathe- Maudslay was certainly not the first, but I know he however was the first to build a screw-cutting lathe with adjustment built in as to carefully eliminate the tiny imperfections of pitch in the leadscrew (within a ten thousandths of an inch to the meter)- thus creating perfect screws which can be used in new lathes, and so forth- an astounding achievement, really. The level of precision, rigidity, robustness, and functionality he put into his machine tools I guess is what makes his contributions so much more important to some- although I can understand that to others it's only important who was first.03:25, 11 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.195.132.29 (talk)

Number of woodworking machines

According to James Nasmyth's Biography, there were 'forty-four' in number, not 42. See http://www.naesmyth.com/bio/jn07.htm 20.133.0.13 (talk) 10:20, 29 September 2009 (UTC)

First specialized machinery?

I removed the following from the article, re Maudslay's Portmsouth pulleys:

This was the first well-known example of specialized machinery in an assembly line type factory.

Although there's a source attached (and I admit I haven't located the original text), the claim seems overly bold. For example, Hargreave's spinning jenny was in use as specialised machinery in an assembly-line style from 1784. Happy to discuss the removal if there's disagreement. Euryalus (talk) 09:20, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

The original claim was obviously wrong, but not by much. "Machinery" wasn't a new innovation, but "specialized machinery for manufacture by machining" was. This excludes both textiles (not a machining process) and the many pin factory processes (e.g. hat making) that were assembly lines, but using hand labour rather than machine tools. Andy Dingley (talk) 10:53, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Fair point. Is there an alternative wording that could be used? I'd prefer not to paraphrase the line I removed because it's sourced to a book I haven't read, so I could lose whatever the original meaning was in trying to improve the accuracy of the sentence. Euryalus (talk) 11:02, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

You really out to read the book 8-) If you've any interest in articles like this, you'll be wanting a copy of Rolt (and most of Rolt's work). His Victorian Engineers and particularly Tools for the Job are classics in the field.

I've rephrased it, and added a couple of other refs, one with a literal quote. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:06, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

My interest is more in Portsmouth docks than in Maudslay, but thanks for improving the sentence. I'll hunt down a copy of Rolt for background reading when next at the library. :) Euryalus (talk) 11:36, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Maudslay's slide rest late and screw cutting

I believe the section labeled screw cutting should be re-labeled to standards for thread and screw sizes. Also, the screw cutting lathe I believe is the slide rest lathe, and if so references should be made to that section instead of repeating. Perhaps better would be to combine them in one section.Phmoreno (talk) 20:28, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

Difference between David Wilkinson's lathe and Maudslay's

Does anyone know the difference? Roe (1916) said he had never seen Wilkinson's lathe, so unless he had a good understanding of it I don't know how he could compare it to Maudslay's. I posted some quotes about Wilkinson's in his Wikipedia articlePhmoreno (talk) 20:37, 11 December 2011 (UTC)

I found the answer to this in An Encyclopedia of the History of Technology by Ian McNeil. Maudslay's lathe was more advanced than Wilkinson's. Wilkinson's did not use change gears so it lacked the ability to cut various thread pitches. However, Wilkinson's lathe was capable of doing heavier work.Phmoreno (talk) 01:11, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

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