from Eminent Engineers
Henry Maudsley was the originator of modern machine tools.
He came of an old English family who had their seat near Ormskirk, but
who became scattered during the eighteenth century. 
William
Maudsley, father of Henry, was a joiner working in the neighborhood of
Bolton. He got into some trouble and joined the Royal Artillery, to be
sent, soon afterward, to the West Indies, where he was badly wounded.
He was sent home, and afterwards discharged, but being a handy workman
was soon employed in the arsenal. Here he was married and Henry was born
in August, 1770. When twelve years of age he was sent to work filling
cartridges, and two years later he was set at work in the carpenters shop.
His heart, however, was in the nearby blacksmith shop, and after several
reprimands for neglecting his work he was transferred to the smithy when
fifteen years of age.
His heart was in this work and he rapidly became an expert craftsman, especially in forging light iron work, and, in the use of the file, he soon surpassed all others.
At this time Joseph Bramah had taken out patents for improved locks of the now well-known tumbler type. These were a great improvement over previous locks. Bramah challenged any one to pick a lock of his manufacture, and the challenge was unaccepted until fifty years later, when Hobbs, an American expert, after sixteen days of effort, finally succeeded.
This lock was so delicate a mechanism that he found difficulty in securing workmen skillful enough to make them. Maudsley was recommended to him, but when Bramah saw how young he was, at that time only eighteen, he hesitated to employ him. His need was so great, however, that he finally hired him. When Maudsley presented himself for service a new difficulty arose. He had not served the requisite seven years of apprenticeship and the other workmen refused to receive him.
Maudsley himself solved the difficulty by proposing the repair of a worn-out and broken bench vice before six o'clock, and if his workmanship did not commend him he would withdraw. His success was complete. The most exacting of the workmen acknowledged his skill. The tact and good sense thus early shown were characteristic of him in all his relations with his workmen.
Maudsley soon proved himself to be the most skillful of them all. It is interesting to note that the very padlock that fifty years later withstood the American expert for sixteen days, was one made by Maudsley's own hands when in the employ of Bramah.
He had the surest eye and the best judgment in undertaking any new work, and it was more and more referred to him.
Notwithstanding his youth, he was advanced from place to place until, by unanimous consent, he was made the head foreman.
Maudsley saw at once that it was essential, if the locks were to be manufactured in any quantity, that the parts must be made by machines that would be independent of men's carelessness. Skilled hand work could make a few, but the number were limited, the expense great and the merit very unequal. He became especially useful in designing special tools for making the patent locks. Smiles says: "In this department Maudsley was eminently successful, and to his laborious ingenuity, as first displayed in Bramah's workshops, and afterwards in his own establishment, we unquestionably owe much of the power and acccuracy of our present self-acting machinery."
Another of his inventions, that alone should bring him fame, was the leather self-tightening collar for packing hydraulic presses. It was Bramah again who patented the press, but its usefulness was nullified by the packing necessary to withstand the enormous pressure, It was Maudsley who designed the leather cup that clings the closer with added pressure but without noticeably increasing friction.
Maudsley stayed with Bramah eight years with but slight increase of wages, and when he, at last, asked for an increase was refused so brusquely that he resigned, and in 1797 opened a small shop of his own near Oxford Street. Little by little work came to him, and every task was so nicely done that it invariably brought him new work. Maudsley continued to apply himself to the invention and improvement of tools that would insure precision of work and make him, in a measure, independent of the carelessness of workmen. It was in this endeavor that he brought to perfection that great improvement with which his name is usually connected, the invention of the slide rest. The first he ever made was while he was still at Bramah's shop, but with his additional improvements he brought the lathe, for the first time, to be a machine of precision, and laid the foundation for the success of all our modern machine tools. Before this, nicety of construction depended altogether on correctness of eye and manual dexterity, with consequent high cost and unequal merit. Thereafter followed that correctness, uniformity and economy that increasingly marked the machine construction of the nineteenth century.
One
of the early tasks that came to Maudsley was brought by Brunel. He had
been granted a patent for tackle blocks which had been adopted by the
admiralty. Maudsley's high reputation came to Brunel's attention, and
he was engaged to perfect the machinery for their manufacture.
Maudsley, who was a fine draftsman, made the drawings and the working models in 1801. Before beginning construction he removed his shop to Margaret Street. The whole of the machinery was there constructed by Maudsley. It took six long years, and was not ready for operation until 1808. It required no less than forty four different machines to do the work, every one of which embodied some more or less radical invention and improvement by Maudsley. These machines were in regular employment at the Portsmouth dockyard for upwards of fifty years.
The success of this block-making machinery brought Maudsley added fame and prosperity.
He moved again, this time to Lambeth, and took in a partner in 1810, the company thereafter being known as Maudsley & Field. They made many and various kinds of machinery, flour mills, saw mills, mint machinery, machine tools and engines of all kinds, especially marine engines. A patent granted in 1807 for improvement in steam engines, specified, among other things, the now common pyramidal type of marine engine, with direct connections from piston to crank. He invented a machine for punching boiler plates, and continued to improve the lathe as long as he lived. He made some large machines, but he took the greatest interest in machines of delicacy and precision.
His love for accuracy early led him to give thought to improvement in screw cutting. He made a machine for cutting original screws and from that made the first screw-cutting lathe. He also took the first steps for securing uniformity and standard pitch.
Like all good workmen he took great pride in keeping his tools in good order and condition. Every machine to which he gave thought came from his hand simplified, improved, and with the impress of his personality upon it.
But that for which Maudsley is most worthy of remembrance is not the machinery he built, but the men he trained. His exceedingly attractive nature, his tall, fine presence, his genial ways, bound men to him; not only his friends, but his workmen loved him as a man, while honoring him as a master workman. It was quite natural that there should gather around him a group of assistants who were young men of ability and worth. In fact his shop came to have a reputation all over England as the place for securing the best mechanical training. It was with him that such men as James Nasmyth, Sir Joseph Whitworth, Joseph Clement, and a host of others received their training. This training was not in mechanics alone, but in the wise comments and advice that fell from his lips and, like seed falling in good ground, sprang up, in the years that followed, in the able life of his "boys."
He had his friends also among the foremost scholars and scientists of the day, who made his private workshop a favorite rendezvous. From his shop radiated an influence that is plainly seen in the wonderful development of mechanical engineering in England from his time on. Under his training such men as Nasmyth, Clement and Whitworth, and others received their training, and from them his influence passed on to Sellers and Colt, to E.K. Root, and Francis A. Pratt, to shape also our American practice.
In personal appearance his was of commanding stature, six feet two inches tall, and massively built. He had a high forehead, eyes bright and keen, lips expressive of good humor, but strong and alert. He was cheerful, honest, intellectual and energetic.
He went to France to see a friend who was very sick and, on returning, caught a severe cold, from which he died in 1831.
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