James Nasmyth
Encyclopedia
James Hall Nasmyth (19 August 1808 –7 May 1890) was a Scottish
engineer
and inventor famous for his development of the steam hammer
. He was the co-founder of Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company
manufacturers of machine tools. He retired at the age of 48, and moved to Penshurst
, Kent where he developed his hobbies of astronomy
and photography
.
was a landscape and portrait painter in Edinburgh
, where James was born. One of Alexander's hobbies was mechanics
and he employed nearly all his spare time in his workshop where he encouraged his youngest son to work with him in all sorts of materials. James was sent to the Royal High School
where he had as a friend, Jimmy Patterson, the son of a local iron founder. Being already interested in mechanics he spent much of his time at the foundry
and there he gradually learned to work and turn in wood, brass, iron, and steel. In 1820 he left the High School and again made great use of his father's workshop where at the age of 17, he made his first steam engine.
Some years later the subject of steam carriages for use on the roads
was arousing a lot of interest and in 1828 James made a complete steam carriage that was capable of running a mile carrying 8 passengers. This accomplishment increased his desire to become a mechanical engineer. He had heard of the fame of Henry Maudslay
's workshop and resolved to get employment there; unfortunately his father could not afford to place him as an apprentice at Maudslay's works. Nasmyth therefore decided instead to show Maudslay examples of his skills and produced a complete working model of a high-pressure steam engine, creating the working drawings and constructing the components himself.
In May 1829 Nasmyth visited Maudslay in London, and after showing him his work was engaged as an assistant workman at 10 shillings a week. Unfortunately, Maudslay died two years later, whereupon Nasmyth was taken on by Maudslay's partner as a draughtsman
.
When Nasmyth was 23 years old, having saved the sum of ₤69, he decided to set up in business on his own. He rented a Factory Flat 130 feet long by 27 feet wide at an old Cotton Mill on Dale Street, Manchester. The combination of massive castings and a wooden floor was not an ideal one, and after an accident involving one end of an engine beam crashing through the floor into a glass cutters flat below he soon relocated. He moved to Patricroft
, an area of the town of Eccles
, Lancashire
, where in August 1836, he and his business partner Holbrook Gaskell
opened the Bridgewater Foundry, where they traded as Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company. The premises were constructed adjacent to the (then new) Liverpool and Manchester Railway
and the Bridgewater Canal
.
In March 1838 James was making a journey by coach from Sheffield
to York
in a snowstorm, when he spied some ironwork furnaces in the distance. The coachman informed him that they were managed by a Mr. Hartop who was one of his customers. He immediately got off the coach and headed for the furnaces through the deep snow. He found Mr. Hartop at his house, and was invited to stay the night and visit the works the next day. That evening he met Hartop's family and was immediately smitten by his 21-year-old daughter, Anne. A decisive man, the next day he told her of his feelings and intentions, which was received "in the best spirit that I could desire." He then communicated the same to her parents, and told them his prospects, and so became betrothed in the same day. They were married two years later, on 16 June 1840 in Wentworth
.
Up to 1843, Nasmyth, Gaskell & Co. concentrated on producing a wide range of machine tools in large numbers. By 1856, Nasmyth had built 236 shaping machines.
In 1840 he began to receive orders from the newly-opened railways which were beginning to cover the country, for locomotive
s. His connection with the Great Western Railway
whose famous steamship SS Great Western
had been so successful in voyages between Bristol
and New York
, led to him being asked to make some machine tool
s of unusual size and power which were required for the construction of the engines of their next and bigger ship SS Great Britain
.
In 1837 the Great Western Steam Company was experiencing many problems forging the paddle shaft of the SS Great Britain
; when even the largest hammer was tilted to its full height its range was so small that if a really large piece of work were placed on the anvil, the hammer had no room to fall, and in 1838 the company's engineer wrote to Nasmyth:
Nasmyth thought the matter over and seeing the obvious defects of the tilt-hammer
(it delivered every blow with the same force) sketched out his idea for the first steam hammer
. He kept his ideas for new devices, mostly in drawings, in a "Scheme Book" which he freely showed to his foreign customers.
In April 1842, Nasmyth visited France
with a view to supplying the French arsenals and dockyards with tools and while he was there took the opportunity to visit the Le Creusot
works. On going round the works, he found his own steam-hammer at work. A short explanation soon cleared up the mystery (one of the managers of the Works had copied the drawing of it from the Scheme Book while on a visit to England). A mere two months after his return to England, Nasmyth patented the hammer, in June 1842, and began production of them in Edinburgh. By using the hammer production costs could be reduced by over 50 percent, while at the same time improving the quality of the forgings produced.
The first hammers were of the free-fall type but they were later modified, given power-assisted fall. Up until then, the invention of Nasmyth's steam-hammer, large forging, such as ships' anchor
s, had to be made by the "bit-by-bit" process, that is, small pieces were forged separately and finally welded together. A key feature of his machine was that the operator controlled the force of each blow. He enjoyed showing off its capability by demonstrating how it could first break an egg placed in a wine glass, without breaking the glass, which was followed by a full-force blow which shook the building. Its advantages soon became so obvious that before long Nasmyth hammers were to be found in all the large workshops all over the country.
An original Nasmyth hammer now stands facing Nasmyth's Patricroft foundry buildings (now a 'business park'). A larger Nasmyth & Wilson steam hammer stands in the campus of the University of Bolton
.
Nasmyth subsequently applied the principle of his steam hammer to a pile-driving machine
which he invented in 1843. His first full scale machine used a four ton hammer-block, and a rate of eighty blows per minute. The pile driver was first demonstrated in a contest with a team using the conventional method at Devonport on 3 July 1845. He drove a pile 70 feet long and 18 inches squared in four and a half minutes, while the conventional method required twelve hours. This was a great success, and many orders for his pile driver resulted. It was used for many large scale constructions all over the world in the next few years, such as the High Level Bridge
at Newcastle upon Tyne
and the Nile
barrage
at Aswan
, Egypt
.
By 1856 a total of 490 hammers had been produced which were sold across Europe to Russia, India and even Australia, and accounted for 40% of James Nasmyth and Company's revenues.
, an adaptation of the planer
which is still used in tool and die making. Another innovation was a hydraulic press
which used water pressure to force tight-fitting machine parts together. All of these machines became popular in manufacturing, and all are still in use in modified form.
Nasmyth was also one of the first toolmakers to offer a standardised range of machine tools; before this, manufacturers constructed tools according to individual clients' specifications, with little regard to standardisation and caused compatibility problems.
Among Nasmyth's other inventions, most of which he never patented, were a means of transmitting rotary motion by means of a flexible shaft made of coiled wire, a machine for cutting key grooves, self-adjusting bearings, and the screw ladle for moving molten metal which could safely and efficiently be handled by two men instead of the six previously required.
Although milling machine
s were no longer novel by 1830, an example built by Nasmyth around that time stands out for its prescience. It was tooled to mill the six sides of a hex nut that was mounted in a six-way indexing
fixture.
He also worked on a project for the conversion of iron which was not dis-similar to that which was eventually patented by Henry Bessemer
. A reluctant patentor, and in this instance still working through some problems in his method, Nasmyth abandoned the project after hearing of Bessemer's ideas in 1856. Bessemer, however, acknowledged the efforts of Nasmyth by offering him a one-third share of the value of his patent for the eponymous Bessemer process
. Nasmyth turned it down as he had decided to retire.
, Kent, where he renamed his retirement home "Hammerfield" and happily pursued his various hobbies including astronomy
. He built his own 20-inch reflecting telescope
, in the process inventing the Nasmyth focus
, and made detailed observations of the Moon
. He co-wrote The Moon : Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite with James Carpenter
(1840–1899). This book contains an interesting series of "lunar" photographs: because photography was not yet advanced enough to take actual pictures of the Moon, Nasmyth built plaster models based on his visual observations of the Moon and then photographed the models. http://search.lindahall.org/events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/moon/p20.htm A crater
on the Moon is named after him.
He was arguably the last of the early pioneers of the machine tool
industry.
He was happily married for 50 years, until his death. They had no children.
In memory of his renowned contribution to the discipline of mechanical engineering, the Department of Mechanical Engineering building at Heriot-Watt University
, in his birthplace of Edinburgh
, is called the James Nasmyth Building.
Scotland
Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...
engineer
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
and inventor famous for his development of the steam hammer
Steam hammer
A steam hammer is a power-driven hammer used to shape forgings. It consists of a hammer-like piston located within a cylinder. The hammer is raised by the pressure of steam injected into the lower part of a cylinder and falls down with a force by removing the steam. Usually, the hammer is made to...
. He was the co-founder of Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company
Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company
Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company, originally called The Bridgewater Foundry, specialised in the production of heavy machine tools and locomotives. It was located in Patricroft, in Salford England, close to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the Bridgewater Canal and the Manchester Ship Canal...
manufacturers of machine tools. He retired at the age of 48, and moved to Penshurst
Penshurst
Penshurst is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks district of Kent, England. The parish is located on the northern slopes of the Weald, west of Tonbridge. Within the parish boundaries are the two villages of Penshurst and Fordcombe, with a combined population of some 1,479 persons. The...
, Kent where he developed his hobbies of astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
and photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...
.
Early life
His father Alexander NasmythAlexander Nasmyth
Alexander Nasmyth was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, often called the "father of Scottish landscape painting".-Biography:...
was a landscape and portrait painter in Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, where James was born. One of Alexander's hobbies was mechanics
Mechanics
Mechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behavior of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effects of the bodies on their environment....
and he employed nearly all his spare time in his workshop where he encouraged his youngest son to work with him in all sorts of materials. James was sent to the Royal High School
Royal High School (Edinburgh)
The Royal High School of Edinburgh is a co-educational state school administered by the City of Edinburgh Council. The school was founded in 1128 and is one of the oldest schools in Scotland, and has, throughout its history, been high achieving, consistently attaining well above average exam results...
where he had as a friend, Jimmy Patterson, the son of a local iron founder. Being already interested in mechanics he spent much of his time at the foundry
Foundry
A foundry is a factory that produces metal castings. Metals are cast into shapes by melting them into a liquid, pouring the metal in a mold, and removing the mold material or casting after the metal has solidified as it cools. The most common metals processed are aluminum and cast iron...
and there he gradually learned to work and turn in wood, brass, iron, and steel. In 1820 he left the High School and again made great use of his father's workshop where at the age of 17, he made his first steam engine.
Some years later the subject of steam carriages for use on the roads
History of steam road vehicles
The history of steam road vehicles describes the development of vehicles powered by a steam engine for use on land and independent of rails; whether for conventional road use, such as the steam car and steam waggon, or for agricultural or heavy haulage work, such as the traction engine.The first...
was arousing a lot of interest and in 1828 James made a complete steam carriage that was capable of running a mile carrying 8 passengers. This accomplishment increased his desire to become a mechanical engineer. He had heard of the fame of Henry Maudslay
Henry Maudslay
Henry Maudslay was a British machine tool innovator, tool and die maker, and inventor. He is considered a founding father of machine tool technology.-Early life:...
's workshop and resolved to get employment there; unfortunately his father could not afford to place him as an apprentice at Maudslay's works. Nasmyth therefore decided instead to show Maudslay examples of his skills and produced a complete working model of a high-pressure steam engine, creating the working drawings and constructing the components himself.
Career
Technical drawing
Technical drawing, also known as drafting or draughting, is the act and discipline of composing plans that visually communicate how something functions or has to be constructed.Drafting is the language of industry....
.
When Nasmyth was 23 years old, having saved the sum of ₤69, he decided to set up in business on his own. He rented a Factory Flat 130 feet long by 27 feet wide at an old Cotton Mill on Dale Street, Manchester. The combination of massive castings and a wooden floor was not an ideal one, and after an accident involving one end of an engine beam crashing through the floor into a glass cutters flat below he soon relocated. He moved to Patricroft
Patricroft
Patricroft is a district of Eccles, England, within the historic county boundaries of Lancashire.-History:Patricroft may derive its name from 'Pear-tree croft', or more likely, 'Patrick's Croft'. In 1836, James Nasmyth, in partnership with Holbrook Gaskell, built the Bridgewater Foundry in...
, an area of the town of Eccles
Eccles, Greater Manchester
Eccles is a town in the City of Salford, a metropolitan borough of Greater Manchester in North West England, west of Salford and west of Manchester city centre...
, Lancashire
Lancashire
Lancashire is a non-metropolitan county of historic origin in the North West of England. It takes its name from the city of Lancaster, and is sometimes known as the County of Lancaster. Although Lancaster is still considered to be the county town, Lancashire County Council is based in Preston...
, where in August 1836, he and his business partner Holbrook Gaskell
Holbrook Gaskell
Holbrook Gaskell was a British industrialist, and an art and plant collector.-Early life:Holbrook Gaskell was born in Wavertree, Liverpool. He was the eldest son of Roger Gaskell, a sailcloth manufacturer, from his marriage to his cousin Anne Hunter. He was baptised on the 11 April 1813 at...
opened the Bridgewater Foundry, where they traded as Nasmyth, Gaskell and Company. The premises were constructed adjacent to the (then new) Liverpool and Manchester Railway
Liverpool and Manchester Railway
The Liverpool and Manchester Railway was the world's first inter-city passenger railway in which all the trains were timetabled and were hauled for most of the distance solely by steam locomotives. The line opened on 15 September 1830 and ran between the cities of Liverpool and Manchester in North...
and the Bridgewater Canal
Bridgewater Canal
The Bridgewater Canal connects Runcorn, Manchester and Leigh, in North West England. It was commissioned by Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, to transport coal from his mines in Worsley to Manchester...
.
In March 1838 James was making a journey by coach from Sheffield
Sheffield
Sheffield is a city and metropolitan borough of South Yorkshire, England. Its name derives from the River Sheaf, which runs through the city. Historically a part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, and with some of its southern suburbs annexed from Derbyshire, the city has grown from its largely...
to York
York
York is a walled city, situated at the confluence of the Rivers Ouse and Foss in North Yorkshire, England. The city has a rich heritage and has provided the backdrop to major political events throughout much of its two millennia of existence...
in a snowstorm, when he spied some ironwork furnaces in the distance. The coachman informed him that they were managed by a Mr. Hartop who was one of his customers. He immediately got off the coach and headed for the furnaces through the deep snow. He found Mr. Hartop at his house, and was invited to stay the night and visit the works the next day. That evening he met Hartop's family and was immediately smitten by his 21-year-old daughter, Anne. A decisive man, the next day he told her of his feelings and intentions, which was received "in the best spirit that I could desire." He then communicated the same to her parents, and told them his prospects, and so became betrothed in the same day. They were married two years later, on 16 June 1840 in Wentworth
Wentworth
-People:* Baron Wentworth , the Wentworth peerage, several men and women.* D'Arcy Wentworth , surgeon in the early days of Sydney, Australia, and father of William Charles Wentworth I....
.
Up to 1843, Nasmyth, Gaskell & Co. concentrated on producing a wide range of machine tools in large numbers. By 1856, Nasmyth had built 236 shaping machines.
In 1840 he began to receive orders from the newly-opened railways which were beginning to cover the country, for locomotive
Locomotive
A locomotive is a railway vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. The word originates from the Latin loco – "from a place", ablative of locus, "place" + Medieval Latin motivus, "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term locomotive engine, first used in the early 19th...
s. His connection with the Great Western Railway
Great Western Railway
The Great Western Railway was a British railway company that linked London with the south-west and west of England and most of Wales. It was founded in 1833, received its enabling Act of Parliament in 1835 and ran its first trains in 1838...
whose famous steamship SS Great Western
SS Great Western
SS Great Western of 1838, was an oak-hulled paddle-wheel steamship; the first purpose-built for crossing the Atlantic and the initial unit of the Great Western Steamship Company. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Great Western proved satisfactory in service and was the model for all successful...
had been so successful in voyages between Bristol
Bristol
Bristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, with an estimated population of 433,100 for the unitary authority in 2009, and a surrounding Larger Urban Zone with an estimated 1,070,000 residents in 2007...
and New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, led to him being asked to make some machine tool
Machine tool
A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...
s of unusual size and power which were required for the construction of the engines of their next and bigger ship SS Great Britain
SS Great Britain
SS Great Britain was an advanced passenger steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York. While other ships had previously been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first...
.
The steam hammer
SS Great Britain
SS Great Britain was an advanced passenger steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel for the Great Western Steamship Company's transatlantic service between Bristol and New York. While other ships had previously been built of iron or equipped with a screw propeller, Great Britain was the first...
; when even the largest hammer was tilted to its full height its range was so small that if a really large piece of work were placed on the anvil, the hammer had no room to fall, and in 1838 the company's engineer wrote to Nasmyth:
Nasmyth thought the matter over and seeing the obvious defects of the tilt-hammer
Trip hammer
A trip hammer, also known as a helve hammer, is a massive powered hammer used in:* agriculture to facilitate the labor of pounding, decorticating and polishing of grain;...
(it delivered every blow with the same force) sketched out his idea for the first steam hammer
Steam hammer
A steam hammer is a power-driven hammer used to shape forgings. It consists of a hammer-like piston located within a cylinder. The hammer is raised by the pressure of steam injected into the lower part of a cylinder and falls down with a force by removing the steam. Usually, the hammer is made to...
. He kept his ideas for new devices, mostly in drawings, in a "Scheme Book" which he freely showed to his foreign customers.
In April 1842, Nasmyth visited France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
with a view to supplying the French arsenals and dockyards with tools and while he was there took the opportunity to visit the Le Creusot
Le Creusot
Le Creusot is a commune in the Saône-et-Loire department in the region of Bourgogne in eastern France.The inhabitants are known as Creusotins. Formerly a mining town, its economy is now dominated by metallurgical companies such as ArcelorMittal, Schneider Electric, and Alstom.Since the 1990s, the...
works. On going round the works, he found his own steam-hammer at work. A short explanation soon cleared up the mystery (one of the managers of the Works had copied the drawing of it from the Scheme Book while on a visit to England). A mere two months after his return to England, Nasmyth patented the hammer, in June 1842, and began production of them in Edinburgh. By using the hammer production costs could be reduced by over 50 percent, while at the same time improving the quality of the forgings produced.
The first hammers were of the free-fall type but they were later modified, given power-assisted fall. Up until then, the invention of Nasmyth's steam-hammer, large forging, such as ships' anchor
Anchor
An anchor is a device, normally made of metal, that is used to connect a vessel to the bed of a body of water to prevent the vessel from drifting due to wind or current. The word derives from Latin ancora, which itself comes from the Greek ἄγκυρα .Anchors can either be temporary or permanent...
s, had to be made by the "bit-by-bit" process, that is, small pieces were forged separately and finally welded together. A key feature of his machine was that the operator controlled the force of each blow. He enjoyed showing off its capability by demonstrating how it could first break an egg placed in a wine glass, without breaking the glass, which was followed by a full-force blow which shook the building. Its advantages soon became so obvious that before long Nasmyth hammers were to be found in all the large workshops all over the country.
An original Nasmyth hammer now stands facing Nasmyth's Patricroft foundry buildings (now a 'business park'). A larger Nasmyth & Wilson steam hammer stands in the campus of the University of Bolton
University of Bolton
The University of Bolton is a university in Bolton, Greater Manchester, England. It has around 14,000 students across all sites and courses, with 700 academic and professional staff. Around 70% of its students come from Bolton and the North West region...
.
Nasmyth subsequently applied the principle of his steam hammer to a pile-driving machine
Pile driver
A pile driver is a mechanical device used to drive piles into soil to provide foundation support for buildings or other structures. The term is also used in reference to members of the construction crew that work with pile-driving rigs....
which he invented in 1843. His first full scale machine used a four ton hammer-block, and a rate of eighty blows per minute. The pile driver was first demonstrated in a contest with a team using the conventional method at Devonport on 3 July 1845. He drove a pile 70 feet long and 18 inches squared in four and a half minutes, while the conventional method required twelve hours. This was a great success, and many orders for his pile driver resulted. It was used for many large scale constructions all over the world in the next few years, such as the High Level Bridge
High Level Bridge
The High Level Bridge is a road and railway bridge spanning the River Tyne between Newcastle upon Tyne and Gateshead in North East England.-Design:...
at Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne
Newcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England. Historically a part of Northumberland, it is situated on the north bank of the River Tyne...
and the Nile
Nile
The Nile is a major north-flowing river in North Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world. It is long. It runs through the ten countries of Sudan, South Sudan, Burundi, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda and Egypt.The Nile has two major...
barrage
Barrage
Barrage may refer to:In music* Barrage , a Canadian violin ensemble, or* Barrage , their self-titled debut albumIn engineering...
at Aswan
Aswan
Aswan , formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate.It stands on the east bank of the Nile at the first cataract and is a busy market and tourist centre...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
.
By 1856 a total of 490 hammers had been produced which were sold across Europe to Russia, India and even Australia, and accounted for 40% of James Nasmyth and Company's revenues.
Other inventions
Apart from the steam hammer Nasmyth created several other important machine tools, including the shaperShaper
A shaper is a type of machine tool that uses linear relative motion between the workpiece and a single-point cutting tool to machine a linear toolpath. Its cut is analogous to that of a lathe, except that it is linear instead of helical...
, an adaptation of the planer
Planer (metalworking)
A planer is a type of metalworking machine tool that uses linear relative motion between the workpiece and a single-point cutting tool to machine a linear toolpath. Its cut is analogous to that of a lathe, except that it is linear instead of helical...
which is still used in tool and die making. Another innovation was a hydraulic press
Hydraulic press
A hydraulic is a machine using a hydraulic cylinder to generate a compressive force. It uses the hydraulic equivalenta mechanical lever, and was also known as a Bramah press after the inventor, Joseph Bramah, of England. He invented and was issued a patent on this press in 1795...
which used water pressure to force tight-fitting machine parts together. All of these machines became popular in manufacturing, and all are still in use in modified form.
Nasmyth was also one of the first toolmakers to offer a standardised range of machine tools; before this, manufacturers constructed tools according to individual clients' specifications, with little regard to standardisation and caused compatibility problems.
Among Nasmyth's other inventions, most of which he never patented, were a means of transmitting rotary motion by means of a flexible shaft made of coiled wire, a machine for cutting key grooves, self-adjusting bearings, and the screw ladle for moving molten metal which could safely and efficiently be handled by two men instead of the six previously required.
Although milling machine
Milling machine
A milling machine is a machine tool used to machine solid materials. Milling machines are often classed in two basic forms, horizontal and vertical, which refers to the orientation of the main spindle. Both types range in size from small, bench-mounted devices to room-sized machines...
s were no longer novel by 1830, an example built by Nasmyth around that time stands out for its prescience. It was tooled to mill the six sides of a hex nut that was mounted in a six-way indexing
Indexing (motion)
Indexing in reference to motion is moving into a new position or location quickly and easily but also precisely. After a machine part has been indexed, its location is known to within a few hundredths of a millimeter , or often even to within a few thousandths of a millimeter , despite the fact...
fixture.
He also worked on a project for the conversion of iron which was not dis-similar to that which was eventually patented by Henry Bessemer
Henry Bessemer
Sir Henry Bessemer was an English engineer, inventor, and businessman. Bessemer's name is chiefly known in connection with the Bessemer process for the manufacture of steel.-Anthony Bessemer:...
. A reluctant patentor, and in this instance still working through some problems in his method, Nasmyth abandoned the project after hearing of Bessemer's ideas in 1856. Bessemer, however, acknowledged the efforts of Nasmyth by offering him a one-third share of the value of his patent for the eponymous Bessemer process
Bessemer process
The Bessemer process was the first inexpensive industrial process for the mass-production of steel from molten pig iron. The process is named after its inventor, Henry Bessemer, who took out a patent on the process in 1855. The process was independently discovered in 1851 by William Kelly...
. Nasmyth turned it down as he had decided to retire.
Later life
He retired from business in 1856 when he was 48 years old, as he said "I have now enough of this world's goods: let younger men have their chance". He settled down near PenshurstPenshurst
Penshurst is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks district of Kent, England. The parish is located on the northern slopes of the Weald, west of Tonbridge. Within the parish boundaries are the two villages of Penshurst and Fordcombe, with a combined population of some 1,479 persons. The...
, Kent, where he renamed his retirement home "Hammerfield" and happily pursued his various hobbies including astronomy
Astronomy
Astronomy is a natural science that deals with the study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the atmosphere of Earth...
. He built his own 20-inch reflecting telescope
Nasmyth telescope
The Nasmyth telescope, also called Nasmyth-Cassegrain, is a reflecting telescope developed by James Nasmyth. It is a modified form of a Cassegrain telescope, mounted on an alt-azimuth mount.-Scheme:...
, in the process inventing the Nasmyth focus
Nasmyth telescope
The Nasmyth telescope, also called Nasmyth-Cassegrain, is a reflecting telescope developed by James Nasmyth. It is a modified form of a Cassegrain telescope, mounted on an alt-azimuth mount.-Scheme:...
, and made detailed observations of the Moon
Moon
The Moon is Earth's only known natural satellite,There are a number of near-Earth asteroids including 3753 Cruithne that are co-orbital with Earth: their orbits bring them close to Earth for periods of time but then alter in the long term . These are quasi-satellites and not true moons. For more...
. He co-wrote The Moon : Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite with James Carpenter
James Carpenter
James Carpenter was a British astronomer at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.During the 1860s he performed the first observations of stellar spectra at the observatory, under the direction of the Astronomer Royal George Airy...
(1840–1899). This book contains an interesting series of "lunar" photographs: because photography was not yet advanced enough to take actual pictures of the Moon, Nasmyth built plaster models based on his visual observations of the Moon and then photographed the models. http://search.lindahall.org/events_exhib/exhibit/exhibits/moon/p20.htm A crater
Impact crater
In the broadest sense, the term impact crater can be applied to any depression, natural or manmade, resulting from the high velocity impact of a projectile with a larger body...
on the Moon is named after him.
He was arguably the last of the early pioneers of the machine tool
Machine tool
A machine tool is a machine, typically powered other than by human muscle , used to make manufactured parts in various ways that include cutting or certain other kinds of deformation...
industry.
He was happily married for 50 years, until his death. They had no children.
In memory of his renowned contribution to the discipline of mechanical engineering, the Department of Mechanical Engineering building at Heriot-Watt University
Heriot-Watt University
Heriot-Watt University is a university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The name commemorates George Heriot, the 16th century financier to King James, and James Watt, the great 18th century inventor and engineer....
, in his birthplace of Edinburgh
Edinburgh
Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland, the second largest city in Scotland, and the eighth most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council governs one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas. The council area includes urban Edinburgh and a rural area...
, is called the James Nasmyth Building.