A Radical Change. — From the Square to the Circle; from Angles to Spherical, Cylindrical, and Eccentric Forms. — The Rhythm of Mechanics. — The Potter’s Wheel of the Ancients and the Turning-lathe. — The Speculation of Holtzapffels on its Origin. — The Greeks as Turners. — The Turners of the Middle Ages. — George III. at the Lathe. — Maudslay’s Slide-rest, and the Revolution it wrought. — The Natural History of Black-walnut. — The Practical Value of Imagination. — Disraeli’s Tribute to it; Sir Robert Peel’s Want of it. — The Laboratory animated by Steam. — The Boys at the Lathes. — Their Manly Bearing. — The Lesson.
When the twenty-four boys of the Carpenter’s Laboratory have become expert in the use of the tools employed in carpentry they will be introduced to the Wood-turning Laboratory. The change is radical—from the square to the circle, from the prose to the poetry of mechanical manipulation. Carpentry is distinguished for its corners and angles, turnery for its spherical, cylindrical, and eccentric forms. In these forms Nature abounds and delights, and it is in these forms that the rhythm of mechanics exists. It is by the Turners that the arts are supplied with a thousand and one things of use and beauty. The machines, great and small, from the locomotive to the stocking-knitter—without which the work of the modern world could not be done—these wonderful contrivances, seemingly more cunning than the hand of man, owe their very existence to the turning-lathe.
THE WOOD-TURNING LABORATORY.
The skilled instructor in this department of the school loves to dwell upon the history of turning. Its origin is enveloped in the obscurity of early Egyptian traditions. It is the subject of one of the oldest myths, which runs thus: “Num, the directing spirit of the universe, and oldest of created beings, first exercised the potter’s art, moulding the human race on his wheel. Having made the heavens and the earth, and the air, and the sun and moon, he modelled man out of the dark Nilotic clay, and into his nostrils breathed the breath of life.”
The Potter’s Wheel of the ancients contained the germ of the turning-lathe found in every modern machine-shop, whether for the manipulation of wood or iron. Holtzapffels has an ingenious speculation as to the origin of the invention of the lathe. In his elaborate work on “Turning and Mechanical Manipulation” he says,
“It would appear probable that the origin of the lathe may be found in the revolution given to tools for piercing objects for ornament or use. At first it may be supposed that a spine or thorn from a tree, a splinter of bone or a tooth, was alone used and pressed into the work as we should use a brad-awl. The process would naturally be slow and unsuitable to hard materials, and this probably suggested to the primitive mechanic the idea of attaching a splinter of bone or flint to the end of a short piece of stick, rubbing which between the palms of his hands would give a rotary motion to the tool.”
Of the steps of progress in invention, from the rude turning-tools of the ancients down to the beginning of the present century, when Maudslay’s improvement made the lathe the king of the machine-shop, little is known. By the Greeks the invention of turning was ascribed to Dædalus. Phidias, who produced the two great masterpieces of Greek art, Athene and Jupiter Olympius, was familiar with the then existing system of wood-turning. In cutting figures on signets and gems in such stones as agate, carnelian, chalcedony, and amethyst, the Greek artificers used the wheel and the style. In the abundant ornamentation of Roman dwellings—their elaborately carved chairs, tables, bedsteads, sofas, and stools—there is ample evidence of a knowledge of the art of turning in wood. Improvements were made in turning-tools, and fine ornamental work was done by the artisans of the Middle Ages, to which the cathedrals and palaces of the time bear witness. Later, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, turning became a fashionable amusement among the French nobility and gentry. Louis XVI. was an expert locksmith, and spent much of his royal time in that pursuit. The fashion extended to England. George III. is said to have been an expert wood-turner, to have been “learned in wheels and treadles, chucks and chisels;” and as a matter of course a pursuit indulged by kings was followed by many nobles. There is, however, no evidence that those distinguished amateurs made any improvements in the tools they used; inventions and discoveries in this as in all departments of art came from the other end of the social scale. When the Spaniards sacked Antwerp in 1585 the Flemish silk-weavers fled to England and set up their looms there; and a century later, upon the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, the silk industry of England received a new accession of refugee artisans consisting of persecuted Protestants. Doubtless with the Flemish weavers there crossed the British Channel representatives of all the useful arts, including that of turning; for in another hundred years England took the front rank among nations in nearly all industrial pursuits.
Among the great inventions and discoveries which distinguished the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Maudslay’s slide-rest attachment to the lathe was one of the greatest, if not the greatest. Without it Watt’s invention would have been of little more real service to mankind than the French automata of the first quarter of the same century—the mechanical peacock of Degennes, Vaucauson’s duck, or Maillardet’s conjurer. Mr. Samuel Smiles, in his admirable book on “Iron-workers and Tool-makers,” declares that this passion for automata, which gave rise to many highly ingenious devices, “had the effect of introducing among the higher order of artists habits of nice and accurate workmanship in executing delicate pieces of machinery.” And he adds, “The same combination of mechanical powers which made the steel spider crawl, the duck quack, or waved the tiny rod of the magician, contributed in future years to purposes of higher import—the wheels and pinions, which in these automata almost eluded the human senses by their minuteness, reappearing in modern times in the stupendous mechanism of our self-acting lathes, spinning-mules, and steam-engines.”