In this column we often talk about what engineers invent. Inventing can be a great way to make a name for yourself and can bring instant recognition. We all know Stephenson built the ‘Rocket’, but who built the machines that built the ‘Rocket’? What about all those engineers who make that inventing possible? Mechanical engineers need tools to build with, but inventing tools just somehow lacks the glamour of inventing ‘things’. So it’s time to celebrate the engineers’ engineer.

Henry Maudslay’s father was a military wheelwright who worked at the Woolwich arsenal, having been invalided out of the armed services. On his death in 1780, someone at the arsenal took pity on Maudslay junior and, aged just nine, he was given a job to help his mother and six siblings make ends meet.

Maudslay soon made a mark, showing great precision in his forge work, so much so that he came to the attention of the engineer and inventor Joseph Bramah. Bramah was working at the highest precision end of engineering, making locks, but he wasn’t having much success. Making individual precision items was fine, but Bramah wanted to mass-produce and sell engineering at a price everyone could afford. This is where Maudslay stepped in: joining the company at just 18, he found the problem was not Bramah’s lock design, but the machines he made them on. His stroke of genius was to realise that mass production required repeatable precision, so he went to work not on locks, but on the lathes, cutters and turning machines.

It may seem obvious today, but Maudslay’s brilliant idea was to make parts interchangeable. Previously, every part of a machine was made for that machine, every handmade screw had its own pitch, every nut had to be matched to its own bolt and most bolts were just clinched to tighten them. Nuts were a luxury. Maudslay decided to build machines that would make all these parts identical, so any one would fit any other one, and produce these items in standardised sizes with reference sets of taps and dies to ensure everything fitted.

Within a year, Maudslay was manager of Bramah’s factory. Bramah’s name soon became synonymous with locks and his housekeeper’s name soon became Maudslay, when she married Henry in 1790. Yet as the maker of machines that make machines, Maudslay didn’t receive the recognition he deserved – or the pay, and after nine years, he left Bramah when his boss refused to raise his pay of 30 shillings (£1.50) a week.

Working in London, Maudslay soon came to the attention of another famous engineer, Marc Isambard Brunel, father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 1799, he had won a contract with the Naval dockyard to mass-​produce rigging blocks for ships. Made of hard-to-work woods such as lignum vitae and having to be interchangeable on ships and rigs at high speed, these were high-precision items, and the block mills employed 110 people making them. Brunel’s problem was that there was no such thing as mass production in 1799, and no-one knew how to make the machines that might be able to do it – except Maudslay.

Maudslay set about designing machines that could make blocks to within tiny tolerances and at high speed, aided by another of his inventions, the bench micrometer, which could measure to tolerances of 1/10,000 of an inch. Using his screw-cutting lathe, he could ensure that every screw was the same size and had the same pitch. Bolts of standard gauges fitted nuts of standard gauges and it could be assembled with minimal skill.

Eventually 45 of these machines were installed at the purpose-built Portsmouth Block Mill and between them, they were capable of turning out 130,000 blocks a year. The Navy was delighted as the 110 skilled artificers could be replaced with 10 unskilled machine hands. One imagines the skilled artificers were less impressed. Yet the first day of operation marked a monumental, if unsung, moment in the industrial revolution. For the first time, manual skilled labour was replaced with an unskilled production line. The Navy showed its appreciation by withholding payment for ten years.

Fortunately, further (paid) naval work followed and Maudslay produced the first steam engine to power a Royal Navy vessel, the ‘Lightning’, his company going on to make its name in naval engine manufacturing. However, the sea would be his undoing. Having caught a cold on a Channel crossing from France, he died from complications just four weeks later on 15 February 1831.

In this column we often talk about what engineers invent. Inventing can be a great way to make a name for yourself and can bring instant recognition. We all know Stephenson built the ‘Rocket’, but who built the machines that built the ‘Rocket’? What about all those engineers who make that inventing possible? Mechanical engineers need tools to build with, but inventing tools just somehow lacks the glamour of inventing ‘things’. So it’s time to celebrate the engineers’ engineer.

Henry Maudslay’s father was a military wheelwright who worked at the Woolwich arsenal, having been invalided out of the armed services. On his death in 1780, someone at the arsenal took pity on Maudslay junior and, aged just nine, he was given a job to help his mother and six siblings make ends meet.

Maudslay soon made a mark, showing great precision in his forge work, so much so that he came to the attention of the engineer and inventor Joseph Bramah. Bramah was working at the highest precision end of engineering, making locks, but he wasn’t having much success. Making individual precision items was fine, but Bramah wanted to mass-produce and sell engineering at a price everyone could afford. This is where Maudslay stepped in: joining the company at just 18, he found the problem was not Bramah’s lock design, but the machines he made them on. His stroke of genius was to realise that mass production required repeatable precision, so he went to work not on locks, but on the lathes, cutters and turning machines.

It may seem obvious today, but Maudslay’s brilliant idea was to make parts interchangeable. Previously, every part of a machine was made for that machine, every handmade screw had its own pitch, every nut had to be matched to its own bolt and most bolts were just clinched to tighten them. Nuts were a luxury. Maudslay decided to build machines that would make all these parts identical, so any one would fit any other one, and produce these items in standardised sizes with reference sets of taps and dies to ensure everything fitted.

Within a year, Maudslay was manager of Bramah’s factory. Bramah’s name soon became synonymous with locks and his housekeeper’s name soon became Maudslay, when she married Henry in 1790. Yet as the maker of machines that make machines, Maudslay didn’t receive the recognition he deserved – or the pay, and after nine years, he left Bramah when his boss refused to raise his pay of 30 shillings (£1.50) a week.

Working in London, Maudslay soon came to the attention of another famous engineer, Marc Isambard Brunel, father of Isambard Kingdom Brunel. In 1799, he had won a contract with the Naval dockyard to mass-​produce rigging blocks for ships. Made of hard-to-work woods such as lignum vitae and having to be interchangeable on ships and rigs at high speed, these were high-precision items, and the block mills employed 110 people making them. Brunel’s problem was that there was no such thing as mass production in 1799, and no-one knew how to make the machines that might be able to do it – except Maudslay.

Maudslay set about designing machines that could make blocks to within tiny tolerances and at high speed, aided by another of his inventions, the bench micrometer, which could measure to tolerances of 1/10,000 of an inch. Using his screw-cutting lathe, he could ensure that every screw was the same size and had the same pitch. Bolts of standard gauges fitted nuts of standard gauges and it could be assembled with minimal skill.

Eventually 45 of these machines were installed at the purpose-built Portsmouth Block Mill and between them, they were capable of turning out 130,000 blocks a year. The Navy was delighted as the 110 skilled artificers could be replaced with 10 unskilled machine hands. One imagines the skilled artificers were less impressed. Yet the first day of operation marked a monumental, if unsung, moment in the industrial revolution. For the first time, manual skilled labour was replaced with an unskilled production line. The Navy showed its appreciation by withholding payment for ten years.

Fortunately, further (paid) naval work followed and Maudslay produced the first steam engine to power a Royal Navy vessel, the ‘Lightning’, his company going on to make its name in naval engine manufacturing. However, the sea would be his undoing. Having caught a cold on a Channel crossing from France, he died from complications just four weeks later on 15 February 1831.