On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

by Charles Babbage

The commissioners appointed to examine into the methods proposed for preventing the forgery of bank-notes, state in their report, that out of one hundred and seventy-eight projects communicated to the bank and to the commissioners, there were only twelve of superior skill, and nine which it was necessary more particularly to examine.

319. It is however a curious circumstance, that although the power of combining machinery is so common, yet the more beautiful combinations are exceedingly rare. Those which command our admiration equally by the perfection of their effects and the simplicity of their means, are found only amongst the happiest productions of genius.

To produce movements even of a complicated kind is not difficult. There exist a great multitude of known contrivances for all the more usual purposes, and if the exertion of moderate power is the end of the mechanism to be contrived, it is possible to construct the whole machine upon paper, and to judge of the proper strength to be given to each part as well as to the framework which supports it, and also of its ultimate effect, long before a single part of it has been executed. In fact, all the contrivance, and all the improvements, ought first to be represented in the drawings.

320. On the other hand, there are effects dependent upon physical or chemical properties for the determination of which no drawings will be of any use. These are the legitimate objects of direct trial. For example; if the ultimate result of an engine is to be that it shall impress letters on a copperplate by means of steel punches forced into it, all the mechanism by which the punches and the copper are to be moved at stated intervals, and brought into contact, is within the province of drawing, and the machinery may be arranged entirely upon paper. But a doubt may reasonably spring up, whether the bur that will be raised round the letter, which has been already punched upon the copper, may not interfere with the proper action of the punch for the letter which is to be punched next adjacent to it. It may also be feared that the effect of punching the second letter, if it be sufficiently near to the first, may distort the form of that first figure. If neither of these evils should arise, still the bur produced by the punching might be expected to interfere with the goodness of the impression produced by the copperplate; and the plate itself, after having all but its edge covered with figures, might change its form, from the unequal condensation which it must suffer in this process, so as to render it very difficult to take impressions from it at all. It is impossible by any drawings to solve difficulties such as these, experiment alone can determine their effect. Such experiments having been made, it is found that if the sides of the steel punch are nearly at right angles to the face of the letter, the bur produced is very inconsiderable; that at the depth which is sufficient for copperplate printing, no distortion of the adjacent letters takes place, although those letters are placed very close to each other; that the small bur which arises may easily be scraped off; and that the copperplate is not distorted by the condensation of the metal in punching, but is perfectly fit to print from, after it has undergone that process.

321. The next stage in the progress of an invention, after the drawings are finished and the preliminary experiments have been made, if any such should be requisite, is the execution of the machine itself. It can never be too strongly impressed upon the minds of those who are devising new machines, that to make the most perfect drawings of every part tends essentially both to the success of the trial, and to economy in arriving at the result. The actual execution from working drawings is comparatively an easy task; provided always that good tools are employed, and that methods of working are adopted, in which the perfection of the part constructed depends less on the personal skill of the workman, than upon the certainty of the method employed.

322. The causes of failure in this stage most frequently derive their origin from errors in the preceding one; and it is sufficient merely to indicate a few of their sources. They frequently arise from having neglected to take into consideration that metals are not perfectly rigid but elastic. A steel cylinder of small diameter must not be regarded as an inflexible rod; but in order to ensure its perfect action as an axis, it must be supported at proper intervals.

Again, the strength and stiffness of the framing which supports the mechanism must be carefully attended to. It should always be recollected, that the addition of superfluous matter to the immovable parts of a machine produces no additional momentum, and therefore is not accompanied with the same evil that arises when the moving parts are increased in weight. The stiffness of the framing in a machine produces an important advantage. If the bearings of the axis (those places at which they are supported) are once placed in a straight line, they will remain so, if the framing be immovable; whereas if the framework changes its form, though ever so slightly, considerable friction is immediately produced. This effect is so well understood in the districts where spinning factories are numerous, that, in estimating the expense of working a new factory, it is allowed that five per cent on the power of the steam-engine will be saved if the building is fireproof: for the greater strength and rigidity of a fireproof building prevents the movement of the long shafts or axes which drive the machinery, from being impeded by the friction that would arise from the slightest deviation in any of the bearings.

323. In conducting experiments upon machinery, it is quite a mistake to suppose that any imperfect mechanical work is good enough for such a purpose. If the experiment is worth making, it ought to be tried with all the advantages of which the state of mechanical art admits; for an imperfect trial may cause an idea to be given up, which better workmanship might have proved to be practicable. On the other hand, when once the efficiency of a contrivance has been established, with good workmanship it will be easy afterwards to ascertain the degree of perfection which will suffice for its due action.

324. It is partly owing to the imperfection of the original trials, and partly to the gradual improvements in the art of making machinery, that many inventions which have been tried, and given up in one state of art, have at another period been eminently successful. The idea of printing by means of moveable types had probably suggested itself to the imagination of many persons conversant with impressions taken either from blocks or seals. We find amongst the instruments discovered in the remains of Pompeii and Herculaneum, stamps for words formed out of one piece of metal, and including several letters. The idea of separating these letters, and of recombining them into other words, for the purpose of stamping a book, could scarcely have failed to occur to many: but it would almost certainly have been rejected by those best acquainted with the mechanical arts of that time; for the workmen of those days must have instantly perceived the impossibility of producing many thousand pieces of wood or metal, fitting so perfectly and ranging so uniformly, as the types or blocks of wood now used in the art of printing.

The principle of the press which bears the name of Bramah, was known about a century and a half before the machine, to which it gave rise, existed; but the imperfect state of mechanical art in the time of the discoverer, would have effectually deterred him, if the application of it had occurred to his mind, from attempting to employ it in practice as an instrument for exerting force.