Industrial Biography

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It is always difficult to apportion the due share of merit which
belongs to mechanical inventors, who are accustomed to work upon each
other's hints and suggestions, as well as by their own experience.
Some idea of this difficulty may be formed from the fact that, in the
course of our investigations as to the origin of the planing
machine--one of the most useful of modern tools--we have found that
it has been claimed on behalf of six inventors--Fox of Derby, Roberts
of Manchester, Matthew Murray of Leeds, Spring of Aberdeen, Clement
and George Rennie of London; and there may be other claimants of whom
we have not yet heard. But most mechanical inventions are of a very
composite character, and are led up to by the labour and the study of
a long succession of workers. Thus Savary and Newcomen led up to
Watt; Cugnot, Murdock, and Trevithick to the Stephensons; and
Maudslay to Clement, Roberts, Nasmyth, Whitworth, and many more
mechanical inventors. There is scarcely a process in the arts but has
in like manner engaged mind after mind in bringing it to perfection.
"There is nothing," says Mr. Hawkshaw, "really worth having that man
has obtained, that has not been the result of a combined and gradual
process of investigation. A gifted individual comes across some old
footmark, stumbles on a chain of previous research and inquiry. He
meets, for instance, with a machine, the result of much previous
labour; he modifies it, pulls it to pieces, constructs and
reconstructs it, and by further trial and experiment he arrives at
the long sought-for result."*
[footnote...
Inaugural Address delivered before the Institution of Civil
Engineers, l4th Jan. 1862.
...]

But the making of the invention is not the sole difficulty. It is one
thing to invent, said Sir Marc Brunel, and another thing to make the
invention work. Thus when Watt, after long labour and study, had
brought his invention to completion, he encountered an obstacle which
has stood in the way of other inventors, and for a time prevented the
introduction of their improvements, if not led to their being laid
aside and abandoned. This was the circumstance that the machine
projected was so much in advance of the mechanical capability of the
age that it was with the greatest difficulty it could be executed.
When labouring upon his invention at Glasgow, Watt was baffled and
thrown into despair by the clumsiness and incompetency of his
workmen. Writing to Dr. Roebuck on one occasion, he said, "You ask
what is the principal hindrance in erecting engines? It is always the
smith-work." His first cylinder was made by a whitesmith, of hammered
iron soldered together, but having used quicksilver to keep the
cylinder air-tight, it dropped through the inequalities into the
interior, and "played the devil with the solder." Yet, inefficient
though the whitesmith was, Watt could ill spare him, and we find him
writing to Dr. Roebuck almost in despair, saying, "My old white-iron
man is dead!" feeling his loss to be almost irreparable. His next
cylinder was cast and bored at Carron, but it was so untrue that it
proved next to useless. The piston could not be kept steam tight,
notwithstanding the various expedients which were adopted of stuffing
it with paper, cork, putty, pasteboard, and old hat. Even after Watt
had removed to Birmingham, and he had the assistance of Boulton's
best workmen, Smeaton expressed the opinion, when he saw the engine
at work, that notwithstanding the excellence of the invention, it
could never be brought into general use because of the difficulty of
getting its various parts manufactured with sufficient precision. For
a long time we find Watt, in his letters, complaining to his partner
of the failure of his engines through "villainous bad workmanship."
Sometimes the cylinders, when cast, were found to be more than an
eighth of an inch wider at one end than the other; and under such
circumstances it was impossible the engine could act with precision.
Yet better work could not be had. First-rate workmen in machinery did
not as yet exist; they were only in process of education. Nearly
everything had to be done by hand. The tools used were of a very
imperfect kind. A few ill-constructed lathes, with some drills and
boring-machines of a rude sort, constituted the principal furniture
of the workshop. Years after, when Brunel invented his
block-machines, considerable time elapsed before he could find
competent mechanics to construct them, and even after they had been
constructed he had equal difficulty in finding competent hands to
work them.*
[footnote...
BEAMISH'S Memoir of Sir I. M. Brunel, 79, 80.
...]

Watt endeavoured to remedy the defect by keeping certain sets of
workmen to special classes of work, allowing them to do nothing else.
Fathers were induced to bring up their sons at the same bench with
themselves, and initiate them in the dexterity which they had
acquired by experience; and at Soho it was not unusual for the same
precise line of work to be followed by members of the same family for
three generations. In this way as great a degree of accuracy of a
mechanical kind was arrived at was practicable under the
circumstances. But notwithstanding all this care, accuracy of fitting
could not be secured so long as the manufacture of steam-engines was
conducted mainly by hand. There was usually a considerable waste of
steam, which the expedients of chewed paper and greased hat packed
outside the piston were insufficient to remedy; and it was not until
the invention of automatic machine-tools by the mechanical engineers
about to be mentioned, that the manufacture of the steam-engine
became a matter of comparative ease and certainty. Watt was compelled
to rest satisfied with imperfect results, arising from imperfect
workmanship. Thus, writing to Dr. Small respecting a cylinder 18
inches in diameter, he said, "at the worst place the long diameter
exceeded the short by only three-eighths of an inch." How different
from the state of things at this day, when a cylinder five feet wide
will be rejected as a piece of imperfect workmanship if it be found
to vary in any part more than the 80th part of an inch in diameter!

Not fifty years since it was a matter of the utmost difficulty to set
an engine to work, and sometimes of equal difficulty to keep it
going. Though fitted by competent workmen, it often would not go at
all. Then the foreman of the factory at which it was made was sent
for, and he would almost live beside the engine for a month or more;
and after easing her here and screwing her up there, putting in a new
part and altering an old one, packing the piston and tightening the
valves, the machine would at length begot to work.*
[footnote...
There was the same clumsiness in all kinds of mill-work before the
introduction of machine-tools. We have heard of a piece of machinery
of the old school, the wheels of which, when set to work, made such a
clatter that the owner feared the engine would fall to pieces. The
foreman who set it agoing, after working at it until he was almost in
despair, at last gave it up, saving, "I think we had better leave the
cogs to settle their differences with one another: they will grind
themselves right in time!"
...]
Now the case is altogether different. The perfection of modern
machine-tools is such that the utmost possible precision is secured,
and the mechanical engineer can calculate on a degree of exactitude
that does not admit of a deviation beyond the thousandth part of an
inch. When the powerful oscillating engines of the 'Warrior' were put
on board that ship, the parts, consisting of some five thousand
separate pieces, were brought from the different workshops of the
Messrs. Penn and Sons, where they had been made by workmen who knew
not the places they were to occupy, and fitted together with such
precision that so soon as the steam was raised and let into the
cylinders, the immense machine began as if to breathe and move like a
living creature, stretching its huge arms like a new-born giant, and
then, after practising its strength a little and proving its
soundness in body and limb, it started off with the power of above a
thousand horses to try its strength in breasting the billows of the
North Sea.

Such are among the triumphs of modern mechanical engineering, due in
a great measure to the perfection of the tools by means of which all
works in metal are now fashioned. These tools are themselves among
the most striking results of the mechanical invention of the day.
They are automata of the most perfect kind, rendering the engine and
machine-maker in a great measure independent of inferior workmen. For
the machine tools have no unsteady hand, are not careless nor clumsy,
do not work by rule of thumb, and cannot make mistakes. They will
repeat their operations a thousand times without tiring, or varying
one hair's breadth in their action; and will turn out, without
complaining, any quantity of work, all of like accuracy and finish.
Exercising as they do so remarkable an influence on the development
of modem industry, we now propose, so far as the materials at our
disposal will admit, to give an account of their principal inventors,
beginning with the school of Bramah.

CHAPTER XI.

JOSEPH BRAMAH.

"The great Inventor is one who has walked forth upon the industrial
world, not from universities, but from hovels; not as clad in silks
and decked with honours, but as clad in fustian and grimed with soot
and oil."--ISAAC TAYLOR, Ultimate Civilization.

The inventive faculty is so strong in some men that it may be said to
amount to a passion, and cannot be restrained. The saying that the
poet is born, not made, applies with equal force to the inventor,
who, though indebted like the other to culture and improved
opportunities, nevertheless invents and goes on inventing mainly to
gratify his own instinct. The inventor, however, is not a creator
like the poet, but chiefly a finder-out. His power consists in a
great measure in quick perception and accurate observation, and in
seeing and foreseeing the effects of certain mechanical combinations.
He must possess the gift of insight, as well as of manual dexterity,
combined with the indispensable qualities of patience and
perseverance,--for though baffled, as he often is, he must be ready
to rise up again unconquered even in the moment of defeat. This is
the stuff of which the greatest inventors have been made. The subject
of the following memoir may not be entitled to take rank as a
first-class inventor, though he was a most prolific one; but, as the
founder of a school from which proceeded some of the most
distinguished mechanics of our time, he is entitled to a prominent
place in this series of memoirs.

Joseph Bramah was born in 1748 at the village of Stainborough, near
Barnsley in Yorkshire, where his father rented a small farm under
Lord Strafford. Joseph was the eldest of five children, and was early
destined to follow the plough. After receiving a small amount of
education at the village school, he was set to work upon the farm.
From an early period he showed signs of constructive skill. When a
mere boy, he occupied his leisure hours in making musical
instruments, and he succeeded in executing some creditable pieces of
work with very imperfect tools. A violin, which he made out of a
solid block of wood, was long preserved as a curiosity. He was so
fortunate as to make a friend of the village blacksmith, whose smithy
he was in the practice of frequenting. The smith was an ingenious
workman, and, having taken a liking for the boy, he made sundry tools
for him out of old files and razor blades; and with these his fiddle
and other pieces of work were mainly executed.

Joseph might have remained a ploughman for life, but for an accident
which happened to his right ankle at the age of 16, which unfitted
him for farm-work. While confined at home disabled he spent his time
in carving and making things in wood; and then it occurred to him
that, though he could not now be a ploughman, he might be a mechanic.
When sufficiently recovered, he was accordingly put apprentice to one
Allott, the village carpenter, under whom he soon became an expert
workman. He could make ploughs, window-frames, or fiddles, with equal
dexterity. He also made violoncellos, and was so fortunate as to sell
one of his making for three guineas, which is still reckoned a good
instrument. He doubtless felt within him the promptings of ambition,
such as every good workman feels, and at all events entertained the
desire of rising in his trade. When his time was out, he accordingly
resolved to seek work in London, whither he made the journey on foot.
He soon found work at a cabinet-maker's, and remained with him for
some time, after which he set up business in a very small way on his
own account. An accident which happened to him in the course of his
daily work, again proved his helper, by affording him a degree of
leisure which he at once proceeded to turn to some useful account.
Part of his business consisted in putting up water-closets, after a
method invented or improved by a Mr. Allen; but the article was still
very imperfect; and Bramah had long resolved that if he could only
secure some leisure for the purpose, he would contrive something that
should supersede it altogether. A severe fall which occurred to him
in the course of his business, and laid him up, though very much
against his will, now afforded him the leisure which he desired, and
he proceeded to make his proposed invention. He took out a patent for
it in 1778, describing himself in the specification as "of Cross
Court, Carnaby Market [Golden Square], Middlesex, Cabinet Maker." He
afterwards removed to a shop in Denmark Street, St. Giles's, and
while there he made a further improvement in his invention by the
addition of a water cock, which he patented in 1783. The merits of
the machine were generally recognised, and before long it came into
extensive use, continuing to be employed, with but few alterations,
until the present day. His circumstances improving with the increased
use of his invention, Bramah proceeded to undertake the manufacture
of the pumps, pipes, &c., required for its construction; and,
remembering his friend the Yorkshire blacksmith, who had made his
first tools for him out of the old files and razor-blades, he sent
for him to London to take charge of his blacksmith's department, in
which he proved a most useful assistant. As usual, the patent was
attacked by pirates so soon as it became productive, and Bramah was
under the necessity, on more than one occasion, of defending his
property in the invention, in which he was completely successful.

We next find Bramah turning his attention to the invention of a lock
that should surpass all others then known. The locks then in use were
of a very imperfect character, easily picked by dexterous thieves,
against whom they afforded little protection. Yet locks are a very
ancient invention, though, as in many other cases, the art of making
them seems in a great measure to have become lost, and accordingly
had to be found out anew. Thus the tumbler lock--which consists in
the use of moveable impediments acted on by the proper key only, as
contradistinguished from the ordinary ward locks, where the
impediments are fixed-- appears to have been well known to the
ancient Egyptians, the representation of such a lock being found
sculptured among the bas-reliefs which decorate the great temple at
Karnak. This kind of lock was revived, or at least greatly improved,
by a Mr. Barron in 1774, and it was shortly after this time that
Bramah directed his attention to the subject. After much study and
many experiments, he contrived a lock more simple, more serviceable,
as well as more secure, than Barron's, as is proved by the fact that
it has stood the test of nearly eighty years' experience,*
[footnote...
The lock invented by Bramah was patented in 1784. Mr. Bramah himself
fully set forth the specific merits of the invention in his
Dissertation on the Construction of Locks. In a second patent, taken
out by him in 1798, he amended his first with the object of
preventing the counterfeiting of keys, and suspending the office of
the lock until the key was again in the possession of the owner. This
he effected by enabling the owner so to alter the sliders as to
render the lock inaccessible to such key if applied by any other
person but himself, or until the sliders had been rearranged so as to
admit of its proper action. We may mention in passing that the
security of Bramah's locks depends on the doctrine of combinations,
or multiplication of numbers into each other, which is known to
increase in the most rapid proportion. Thus, a lock of five slides
admits of 3,000 variations, while one of eight will have no less than
1,935,360 changes; in other words, that number of attempts at making
a key, or at picking it, may be made before it can be opened.
...]
and still holds its ground. For a long time, indeed, Bramah's lock
was regarded as absolutely inviolable, and it remained unpicked for
sixty-seven years until Hobbs the American mastered it in 1851. A
notice had long been exhibited in Bramah's shop-window in Piccadilly,
offering 200L. to any one who should succeed in picking the patent
lock. Many tried, and all failed, until Hobbs succeeded, after
sixteen days' manipulation of it with various elaborate instruments.
But the difficulty with which the lock was picked showed that, for
all ordinary purposes, it might be pronounced impregnable.

The new locks were machines of the most delicate kind, the action of
which depended in a great measure upon the precision with which the
springs, sliders, levers, barrels, and other parts were finished. The
merits of the invention being generally admitted, there was a
considerable demand for the locks, and the necessity thus arose for
inventing a series of original machine-tools to enable them to be
manufactured in sufficient quantities to meet the demand. It is
probable, indeed, that, but for the contrivance of such tools, the
lock could never have come in to general use, as the skill of
hand-workmen, no matter how experienced, could not have been relied
upon for turning out the article with that degree of accuracy and
finish in all the parts which was indispensable for its proper
action. In conducting the manufacture throughout, Bramah was greatly
assisted by Henry Maudslay, his foreman, to whom he was in no small
degree indebted for the contrivance of those tool-machines which
enabled him to carry on the business of lock-making with advantage
and profit.

Bramah's indefatigable spirit of invention was only stimulated to
fresh efforts by the success of his lock; and in the course of a few
years we find him entering upon a more important and original line of
action than he had yet ventured on. His patent of 1785 shows the
direction of his studies. Watt had invented his steam-engine, which
was coming into general use; and the creation of motive-power in
various other forms became a favourite subject of inquiry with
inventors. Bramah's first invention with this object was his
Hydrostatic Machine, founded on the doctrine of the equilibrium of
pressure in fluids, as exhibited in the well known 'hydrostatic
paradox.' In his patent of 1785, in which he no longer describes
himself as Cabinet maker, but 'Engine maker' of Piccadilly, he
indicated many inventions, though none of them came into practical
use,--such as a Hydrostatical Machine and Boiler, and the application
of the power produced by them to the drawing of carriages, and the
propelling of ships by a paddle-wheel fixed in the stern of the
vessel, of which drawings are annexed to the specification; but it
was not until 1795 that he patented his Hydrostatic or Hydraulic
Press.

Though the principle on which the Hydraulic Press is founded had long
been known, and formed the subject of much curious speculation, it
remained unproductive of results until a comparatively recent period,
when the idea occurred of applying it to mechanical purposes. A
machine of the kind was indeed proposed by Pascal, the eminent
philosopher, in 1664, but more than a century elapsed before the
difficulties in the way of its construction were satisfactorily
overcome. Bramah's machine consists of a large and massive cylinder,
in which there works an accurately-fitted solid piston or plunger. A
forcing-pump of very small bore communicates with the bottom of the
cylinder, and by the action of the pump-handle or lever, exceeding
small quantities of water are forced in succession beneath the piston
in the large cylinder, thus gradually raising it up, and compressing
bodies whose bulk or volume it is intended to reduce. Hence it is
most commonly used as a packing-press, being superior to every other
contrivance of the kind that has yet been invented; and though
exercising a prodigious force, it is so easily managed that a boy can
work it. The machine has been employed on many extraordinary
occasions in preference to other methods of applying power. Thus
Robert Stephenson used it to hoist the gigantic tubes of the
Britannia Bridge into their bed,*
[footnote...
The weight raised by a single press at the Britannia Bridge was 1144
tons.
...]
and Brunel to launch the Great Eastern steamship from her cradles. It
has also been used to cut bars of iron, to draw the piles driven in
forming coffer dams, and to wrench up trees by the roots, all of
which feats it accomplishes with comparative ease.

The principal difficulty experienced in constructing the hydraulic
press before the time of Bramah arose from the tremendous pressure
exercised by the pump, which forced the water through between the
solid piston and the side of the cylinder in which it worked in such
quantities as to render the press useless for practical purposes.
Bramah himself was at first completely baffled by this difficulty. It
will be observed that the problem was to secure a joint sufficiently
free to let the piston slide up through it, and at the same time so
water-tight as to withstand the internal force of the pump. These two
conditions seemed so conflicting that Bramah was almost at his wit's
end, and for a time despaired of being able to bring the machine to a
state of practical efficiency. None but those who have occupied
themselves in the laborious and often profitless task of helping the
world to new and useful machines can have any idea of the tantalizing
anxiety which arises from the apparently petty stumbling-blocks which
for awhile impede the realization of a great idea in mechanical
invention. Such was the case with the water-tight arrangement in the
hydraulic press. In his early experiments, Bramah tried the expedient
of the ordinary stuffing-box for the purpose of securing the required
water tightness' That is, a coil of hemp on leather washers was
placed in a recess, so as to fit tightly round the moving ram or
piston, and it was further held in its place by means of a
compressing collar forced hard down by strong screws. The defect of
this arrangement was, that, even supposing the packing could be made
sufficiently tight to resist the passage of the water urged by the
tremendous pressure from beneath, such was the grip which the
compressed material took of the ram of the press, that it could not
be got to return down after the water pressure had been removed.

In this dilemma, Bramah's ever-ready workman, Henry Maudslay, came to
his rescue. The happy idea occurred to him of employing the pressure
of the water itself to give the requisite water-tightness to the
collar. It was a flash of common-sense genius-- beautiful through its
very simplicity. The result was Maudslay's self-tightening collar,
the action of which a few words of description will render easily
intelligible. A collar of sound leather, the convex side upwards and
the concave downwards, was fitted into the recess turned out in the
neck of the press-cylinder, at the place formerly used as a
stuffing-box . Immediately on the high pressure water being turned
on, it forced its way into the leathern concavity and 'flapped out'
the bent edges of the collar; and, in so doing, caused the leather to
apply itself to the surface of the rising ram with a degree of
closeness and tightness so as to seal up the joint the closer exactly
in proportion to the pressure of the water in its tendency to escape.
On the other hand, the moment the pressure was let off and the ram
desired to return, the collar collapsed and the ram slid gently down,
perfectly free and yet perfectly water-tight. Thus, the former
tendency of the water to escape by the side of the piston was by this
most simple and elegant self-adjusting contrivance made instrumental
to the perfectly efficient action of the machine; and from the moment
of its invention the hydraulic press took its place as one of the
grandest agents for exercising power in a concentrated and tranquil
form.

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