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Updated: June 4, 2025
Again Brunel appeared at Maudslay's shop with a further drawing, still not explaining his design; but at the third visit, immediately on looking at the fresh drawings he had brought, Maudslay exclaimed, "Ah! now I see what you are thinking of; you want machinery for making blocks."
When they adhered closely to each other, they could only be separated by sliding each off each. This art of producing absolutely plane surfaces is, I believe, a very old mechanical "dodge." But, as employed by Maudslay's men, it greatly contributed to the improvement of the work turned out.
Nevertheless, the execution of some of the details of the machine were so defective, that after giving the most tempting proof of its capabilities at the Royal Mint, Mr. Barton found it absolutely necessary to place it in Maudslay's hands, in order to have its details thoroughly overhauled, and made as mechanically perfect as its design and intention merited.
It happened that a M. de Bacquancourt, one of the French emigres, of whom there were then so many in London, was accustomed almost daily to pass Maudslay's little shop in Wells-street, and being himself an amateur turner, he curiously inspected the articles from time to time exhibited in the window of the young mechanic.
Nasmyth, "is full of Maudslay's presence; and in that machinery, as constructed by him, is to be found the parent of every engineering tool by the aid of which we are now achieving such great things in mechanical construction.
Maudslay's love of accuracy also led him to distrust the verdicts given by the employment of the ordinary callipers and compasses in determining the absolute or relative dimensions of the refined mechanism which he delighted to construct with his own hands.
This beautiful and truly original contrivance became, in the hands of its inventor, the parent of a vast progeny of perfect screws, whose descendants, whether legitimate or not, are to be found in every workshop throughout the world, wherever first-class machinery is constructed. The production of perfect screws was one of Maudslay's highest ambitions and his principal technical achievement.
"I don't know," he has since said, "that any future period of my life abounded in such high enjoyment of existence as the three years I spent at Maudslay's. It was a glorious situation for one like myself, so earnest as I was in all that related to mechanism in the study of men as well as of machinery. I wish many a young man would do as I then did.
He was afterwards appointed a storekeeper in the Dockyard. It was during the former stage of William Maudslay's employment at Woolwich, that the subject of this memoir was born in the house in the court above mentioned, on the 22nd of August, 1771. The boy was early set to work. When twelve years old he was employed as a "powder-monkey," in making and filling cartridges.
He proceeded to London; introduced himself to the great engineer; submitted his drawings; showed his models; and was finally engaged as Mr. Maudslay's private workman. Then came the question of wages. When Nasmyth finally left home to begin the world on his own account, he determined not to cost his father another farthing.
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