INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY.

Press, Volume IV, Issue 447, 5 April 1864, Page 3

INDUSTRIAL BIOGRAPHY.

Mr. Samuel Smiles, author of the Life of Stephenson and Lives of the Engineers, has lately published a work entitled " Industrial Biography ; Ironworkers and Toolmakers," from a critique of which, by the Times, we take the following : — Mr. Smiles has hit upon a rich vein of ore, and works it with great success. This is the age of biography. Remembering that novels are but fictitious biography ; that metaphysics has in our time reduced itself to psychology, which is but. a generalised biography ; and that there never was n time when personal memoirs or biographies proper have been so much studied as in the present century, it appears that the new intellectual movement, which dates from the period of the French Revolution, has this for one of its chief characteristics, that it is essentiully biographical. Mr. Smiles lias the art of biography, which is by no mean so easy of attainment as, judging from the number of persons who attempt this species of composition, one would imagine it to be. Memoirs are countless, but tho number of biographies that can be accepted as successful works of art are very few indeed. Mr. Smiles is not only a skilful workman, he has chosen a new field of work. Hitherto the great biographies have been written of soldiers nnd sailors, and statesmen, poets and artists, and philosophers. It would seem as if these only were the great men of the world, as if these only were the j benefactors of mankind, whose deeds are worthy of memory. Tho suspicion has arisen that, after all, there may be other heroes than those of the pen, the sceptre, and the sword. There ure, indeed, men in various walks of life whose footsteps are worthy of being traced ; but surely, considering what England is, nnd to what we owe most of our material greatness, the lives of our engineers are peculiarly worthy of being written. "Tlie true Epic of our time," says Mr. Ctirlyle, " is not Anns and the man, but Tools and the man —an infinitely wider kind of Epic." Our machinery bus been the making of us ; our ironworks have, in spite of the progress of other nations, still kept the balance in our hands. Smith work in all its branches of engine-making, machine-making, tool-making, cutlery, iron ship-building, and ironworking generally, is our chief glory. England is the mistress of manufactures, and bo the Queen of the world, because it is the land of Smith ; and Mr. Smiles's biographies are a history of the great family of Smith. Why should not Smith have his biography ? Smith gives his gun to the warrior, and his philosophical instrument to the man of science. The •tatesman depends on Smith for his power, and the crown which England wears i> really of iron. What we are at this moment in all our various grades is due more than we know to Smith. AVo may think of Cotton as king; but recent events have shown that it is not king, and whatever supremacy it had it owed to the mechanism which our Smiths have invented. There is a story of a Smith in the Highlands who had done some wrong, and forfeited his life. Tlie chief of the clan, however, among whom he resided, could not afford to lose tho services of the Smith, and offered to satisfy justice by hanging two Websters or Weavers in his stead. This estimate of Smith's value holds to this day. We are great in the weaving of tissues, but we aro greater in the working of metals. Our metal work lies at the foundation of all our achievements. Many persons imagine that the source of our supremacy at sea is our seamanship ; but this is not the case. Skilled as our seamanship is, it can be shown that we owe our dominion of the seas in a far more important degree to our gunsmiths and our gunners. In the last great war the French were far before us in ships; our best ships were those which we captured from them. We beat them in gunnery. Nor was it only in this instance that our guns were of such good service to us and gave us a triumph. In the reign of Elizabeth our ordnance was famous over the world, and the Spanish ships were armed with our own guns. Sir Walter Raleigh on one occasion stated in the House of Commons, " I am euro heretofore one ship of Her Majesty's was able to beat ten Spaniards ; but now, by reason of our own ordnance, we are hardly matched one to one." Mr. Stniles's new volume is a continuation under a different name of his Lives of the Engineers. Whereas among the engineers whose lives he had previously delineated there were some who were ialf architects, for they built bridges, and somo who undertook such vast works as the construction of a canal, those whose biographies he now sketches -were either in the strictest sense makers of engines oi they helped to produce the iron out of which the engines were made. In tho present volume wo have the great engineer presented to us strictly in his character of Smith. First of all we have sketches o! such men as Dud Dudley, Andrew Yarranton, tin Darbys and Keynoldses, Benjamin Huntsman. Henrj Cort, Dr. Roebuck, David Mushet, and Neilson These were the great smiths who forged the iron \ Then we have a feries of chapters givimg a most in terestin<» account of tho lives and labors of such mci , as Bramah, Maudshu, Joseph Clements, Fox o [ Derby, Murray of Leeds, Roberts and Whitworth o , Manchester, James Nasmyth, and William Fairbairn ' These are the great smiths who haye beaten the iroi into the splendid machinery and miraculous tool . wliico are the glory of our country. It will be ob served that some 6f them are still living. It is no I easy to write the biography of living men, but i t would be impossible to give anything like a. complefr s account of our smith-work without including a his tory of what has recently been done. The stean ' hammer of Nasmyth, for example, is little more thai 1 twenty years old/but it has made a new era in ou iron work ; and it would press hard, ijpon Mr. Smile . if he were required to say nothing about it and it o i inventor. , . n ' Much as we rejoice in our inventions; a feeling c .. I melancholy is apt to steal over the mind as its siu o veys the history of invention, and sees how easily , areat idea is lost to mankind. Mr. Smiles seems t « have a profound faith that no human labour is eTe lost, and quotes a writer who says that " the loss c |c a position gained is an event uuknown in the histor of man's struggle with tho forces of inunimat

nature." We wiih that we could reach this delightful creed. Mo far from its I rue, as Mr. Smiles nhservf-. that a tingle stojt won a firmer foo- ,- ---!iold foi- further etlbrt, Tho history of jtr.inkind i> crowded with instances in which mm seem to be μ-iins thrii'.igh the labour of Sisyphu?, rolling stoni'« u;> ihountains only to .-.hi them r<ill down ac:iin. Ti>e very rhapter in which Mr. Smiles ex ressr* his fnith n'loujids in f;mts that are entirely ojv-.>?!v! to it. He himself, indeed, quotes Solomon :i£~iir.?t himself. "Tim tiling that hath been is that which shrill he, and there is no new under the sun.' , Steam was well known to the ancients, and was used to grind linif;-, to tarn spii*, and to perform v.i-ious wonders, lfoger liacon set-ms to have understood the projterties of the «team eiifrine, of the hydraulic engine, nnd of tlie divinij-bell. Typography was known to the Romans. Mr. Smiles save that they made n«e of stereotypes or immovable printing types, but tliere is some ground to believe that on occasion* they used movable types. Ixi China tlie art of printing is Tery old. Lithography wns well known in Germany Ihrec centuries before it was re-invented by Senefelder, :md specimens of the more ancient lithography lire still to be seen. Three centuries n<ro Hlasco do (Jiiray attempted to propel a boat by ."team in the liarhor of Barcelona. Our Pneumatic Despatch Company were anticipated in their plans by the Frenchman, (rauthey, who projected in 1782 something similar to that which wo now see in full operation at Kiiston-square. The Thames-tunnpl is spoken of as a great novelty. There was a tnuuel under the Euphrates at Tlabylon, and another under tho wide mouth of the harbour of Marseilles. The! Romans seem to have known gunpowder, and coal- j gas for purposes of lighting was used by the Chinese atjes ago. Photography was known to Leonardo d:i Tince in the loth century : it was again clearly indicated in the last century, in a volume published .at Paris in 1760 ; in the beginning of the present century it was practised by .Tosiah Wedgwood. Sir Humphrey Davy, and James Watt; and quite recently a silver copperplate, with a daguerreotype on it ofßoultonand Watt's old premise? at Soho, hns been found among the old household lumber of Matthew Boulton. This old discovery hns turned up anew in our time with the most astonishing results. About a hundred years back Lesnge, a proTesser at Getiova, invented the electric telesjraph, and set itworking. Shall we (jo on ? We have given proof enough that mankind do not nlways retain possession of their discoveries, that ofien the same thing has to be invented many times, nnd that the s-tatement that tho loss of a position gained is an event unknown in the history of man's strtiKjrlo with the forcee of inanimate nature is very wide of the truth. The characteristic of the inventor is that he invents many things. Your true inventor lias in his sphere nothing in common with " Singlespecch " Hamilton. He is remarkable for his versatility. James Watts was wonderful in this way. He had something new to suggest on almost every fubjeet. He once astonished a young lady engaged in painting in watercolour by the information which he gave her on the subject of paint brushes. He gave it as his opinion that rats' whiskers are the best material for a very fine brush. We know not whether this advice be sound or not, but we are struck with the novelty of the suggestion and the unusual information which it seemed to imply. Mr. Smiles says little or nothing in the present volume about Watt, but we see Watt's discursive, temper in those whose lives he delineates. Here is B ram ah, for example. B ram ah begins as a cabinetmaker, and while *o engaged it is part of his business to put up water-closets. Forthwith he invents the modern water-closet. Still in the exercise of his business as a cabinetmaker his mind is turned to the subject of locks, and he invents the well-known Hrnmah lock—to this day the most popular lock in England, and the one most believed in. From the lock he turned to the steam-engine, nnd made several valuable improvements in it. He. for example, invented the four-way cock. In 1705 he took out his patent. for the hydraulic press, a most simple instrument with prodigious power. It was with the hydraulic press that Steplienson lifted to their places the gigantic tubes of the Britannia Bridge, and that Br.inel succeeded in launching the Great Eastern. It can root up a huge tree with perfect ease. Two years after the invention of tho hydraulic press Bramah took out a patent for his beer pump, by which the publican raises from his cellars underground the liquor which flows at the bar. He made for the Bank of England nn instrument, still in use, by which it prints with accuracy and ranidity the numbers and date lines on bank-notes. »lt is said that the employment of this instrument in the Bank of England alone saved the labour of 100 clerks. So he went on from one machine to another, and from labour to labour. He made a pen-making machine, he had a new method of constructing carriage-wheels, he had an improved process of laying down waterpipes, he undertook to arrange the waterworks of a citr on a new plan, he hnd new modee of building bridges and canal locks. He seemed to turn his mind to every species of mechanical art. The great variety of invention which our great toolmakers have displayed must be taken in connection with another remarkable fact which we can only express in the well-known words. Sic vos yon vohis. Tlie inventor labours, but some one else often enters upon his labours. One sows and another reaps. Many an invention ruins the inventor —some one else then comes and finds a fortune in it. Not on this aspect of the matter, however, do we now dwell. We refer mainly to the fact than an inventor is frequently unknown, and that the honour of his invention is either wholly lost, or passes to somebody who may in reality have no title to it. Who, asks Mr. Smiles, invented the watch n? a measurer of time ? Who invented the fast and loose pulley ? Who invented the eccentric ? Who invented the method of cutting screws with stocks and dies ? In this view we naturally flunk of Bramah's pupil—Henry Maudsly. Maiidslay went to Bramah as a young man of 18. Bramah was then engaged upon his lock, and was at his wit's end for the means of simnlifying tho manufacture of its various parts. He was almost ashamed to apply for assistance to the youth of 18, but he did apply, "and he got the most valuable aid. It was Maudslay, by the way, who made the famous lock which Mr. Hobbs had sueli difficulty in picking in 1851. Furthermore, to Mnudslay is really due the invention that enabled the hydraulic press to work. The principle of the hydraulic press bad long been known, and the difficulty which Bramah encountered in it and is said to have'maatered was that which had baffled all previous inventors. Through the tremendous pressure exerted by the pump, the water was forced between the solid piston and tho cylinder in such quantities as to render the press practically useless. The difficulty was to work the piston in the cylinder, and yet to contrive tlmt between the piston and the cylinder there should be no escape of water. The difficulty baffled Bramah, as it had baffled everybody else who had faced it. Bramah applied for assistance to Maudslay, then working in his shop at little more than a pound a week. Maudslay at once j invented the leather collar, which, on the principle of ~j a valve, tightens under the pressure of the water. nI " Maudslay himself told mc." says Mr. Nasmyth, i ,f "or led mc to believe, that it was he who invented »f tho self-tightening collar for the hydraulic prees, i, without which it would never have been a sern viceable machine. It is the one thing needful 1 9 that has made it effective in practice. If Maudslay ~ was the inventor of the collar, that one contrivance >t ought to immortalise him. Hβ used to tell mc of it it with great £usto, and I have no reason to doubt c the correctness of his statement." It was after this j. invention that Maudslay left Bramah, because the n latter would UQt raise his wages beyond 30s. ji Haviug produced tlie hydraulic press for Bramah, ir he mnde for Brunei all the machinery by which lie > 9 made blocks. By this system of one man working t s for another much of the praiso due to Maudslay was lost to him; nevertheless he wa3 too good a 3 f man to be altogether hidden. He is well known r . for his slide rest, which effected n revolution in the a \isc of the lathe, for his introduction of the system to iof uniformity of parts in machinery which his » r pupils, Clement and Whitworth have since carried of to perfection, for his ilour and saw mills, for his J Mint machinery, and for his steam engines of all to J kin.de.

We conclude these remarks by referring to one more of our greath Smiths—one. whose name signifies that he is •' Xae Smiih," but who has produced the tool, the steam hammer, which has more ih.-m any other gone to revolutionize the art of working in iron The ste;im-h;iw::M.T as a recent invention has been so often (ic.-rrilk'A. its power of either cracking a nut, or of forging the s'.ieet anchor of the largest ship, ha* been so often the theme of admiring criticism, that wo rieivl not now enumerate its wonders. By means of this nnchine, i>. pile can be driven into the ground in four minutes, that previous l v required for the operation twelve hours. The saving of time thus eilected i* as 1 to I.SOO : and it i> impossible to express more pointedly the power of this extraordinary tool. We speak now, however, of the versatility of such men as Mr. Xasmyth. He produced a steam-engine, somewhat pyramidal in form, which is greatly used in screw ships ; he invented a planing machine, known as Nasmyth's steam-arm ; ho made a circular cutter tor toothed wheels ; and he struck out many useful and ingenious mnehines. But, over and above this, he belongs to a family of pointers, and is himself no mean hand as a painter, lie is jiu antiquary, and has published some curious speculations on the cuneiform inscriptions of Nineveh. He is an astronomer, too, and hns made some striking astronomical observations. He hns made a famous painting of the moon with its craters and moimtairs ; but his moat remarkable work has been a survey of the surface of the sun. With a /ine telescope of Iris own making he made out that the bright surface of the sun consists of separate, insulated individual objects or things, all nearly of one definite size nnd shape, something like a willow leaf. Sir John Herschel describes this as " a most wonderful discovery," and adds—" These wonderful objects have been seen by others as well as by Mr. Nasmyth, so that there is no room to doubt of their reality." Mr.Smiles's little book is full of illustrations of this activity of mind, than which there can be no more pleasant, object of contemplation. Many of the facts which he thus places before v' are wholly new, and are derived from the most likely sources. Thus, Mandsliiy's partner, Mr. Joshua Field, and his pupil, Mr. Xasmyth, supplied the materials for his biography. Mr. John J'enn supplied the chief material for the memoir of Clement. And so of the other memoirs; though they necessarily go over much well-trodden ground, they contain also much original information, expressed with great, clearness, and with a practised skill which renders the reader secure of entertainment in every page.