James Hall Nasmyth (sometimes spelled
Naesmyth,
Nasmith, or
Nesmyth) (August 19, 1808 – May 7, 1890) was a
ScottishScotland 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...
engineerEngineers are concerned with developing economical and safe solutions to practical problems, by applying mathematics and scientific knowledge while considering technical constraints. The term is derived from the Latin root "ingenium," meaning "cleverness"...
and
inventorAn inventor is a person who creates or discovers a new method, form, device or other useful means. The word inventor comes form the latin verb invenire, invent-, to find...
famous for his development of the
steam hammerA 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...
.
Early life
His father
Alexander NasmythAlexander Nasmyth was a Scottish portrait and landscape painter, often called the “father of Scottish landscape painting"....
was a landscape and portrait painter in
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
, where James was born. One of Alexander's hobbies was
mechanicsMechanics is the branch of physics concerned with the behaviour of physical bodies when subjected to forces or displacements, and the subsequent effect 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 SchoolThe Royal High School of Edinburgh can trace its roots back to 1128, and is one of the oldest schools in Scotland. It is a co-educational state comprehensive school, administered by the City of Edinburgh Council...
where he had as a friend Jemmy Patterson, the son of a local iron founder. Being already interested in mechanics he spent much of his time at the
foundryA foundry is a factory that produces metal castings from either ferrous or non-ferrous alloys. Metals are turned into parts 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 metal...
and there he gradually learned to work and turn in
woodWood is an organic material; in the strict sense wood is produced as secondary xylem in the stems of trees . In a living tree it transfers water and nutrients to the leaves and other growing tissues, and has a support function, enabling woody plants to reach large sizes or to stand up for themselves...
,
brassBrass is any alloy of copper and zinc; the proportions of zinc and copper can be varied to create a range of brasses with varying properties. In comparison, bronze is principally an alloy of copper and tin. Despite this distinction, some types of brasses are called bronzes. Brass is a...
,
ironIron is a metallic chemical element with the symbol Fe and atomic number 26. Iron is a group 8 and period 4 element and is therefore classified as a transition metal. Iron and iron alloys are by far the most common metals and the most common ferromagnetic materials in everyday use...
, and
steelSteel is an alloy consisting mostly of iron, with a carbon content between 0.2% and 2.1% by weight, depending on the grade. Carbon is the most cost-effective alloying material for iron, but various other alloying elements are used such as manganese, chromium, vanadium, and tungsten...
. 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 engineA steam engine is a heat engine that performs mechanical work using steam as its working fluid.The idea of using boiling water to produce mechanical motion has a long history, going back about 2000 years...
.
Some years later the subject of
steam carA steam car is a car powered by a steam engine.- Technology :A steam engine is an external combustion engine , as opposed to an internal combustion engine...
riages 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 MaudslayHenry 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 to instead 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
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
draughtsmanTechnical drawing, also known as drafting, is the academic discipline of creating standardized technical drawings by architects, interior designers, drafters, design engineers, and related professionals...
.
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
PatricroftPatricroft is an area of Eccles in the metropolitan borough of the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England.It was administered by the municipal borough of Eccles in the administrative county of Lancashire until both were abolished in 1974.-History:...
, an area of the town of
EcclesEccles 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...
,
LancashireLancashire 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. Lancashire County Council is based in Preston. However, Lancaster is still considered to be the county town...
, where in August 1836, he and his business partner
Holbrook GaskellHolbrook Gaskell was a British industrialist, 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 the Paradise...
opened the Bridgewater Foundry, where they traded as Nasmyth Gaskell & Co.
In March 1838 James was making a journey by coach from
SheffieldSheffield 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, the city has grown from its largely industrial roots to encompass a wider economic base...
to
YorkYork 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 twenty-one 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 June 16, 1840 in
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
locomotiveA 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 RailwayThe 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 three years later...
whose famous steamship
SS Great WesternThe Great Western of 1838, was the initial unit of the Great Western Steamship Company and the first purpose-built Atlantic steamship. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, Great Western proved satisfactory in service and was the model for all successful Atlantic wood paddlers. She was capable of...
had been so successful in voyages between
BristolBristol is a city, unitary authority area and ceremonial county in South West England, west of London, and east of Cardiff.With an estimated population of 416,400 for the unitary authority in mid-2007, and a surrounding urban area with an estimated 561,500 residents, it is England's sixth, and...
and
New YorkNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
, led to him being asked to make some
machine toolA machine tool is a powered mechanical device, typically used to fabricate metal components of machines by machining, which is the selective removal of metal. The term machine tool is usually reserved for tools that used a power source other than human movement, but they can be powered by people if...
s of unusual size and power which were required for the construction of the engines of their next and bigger ship
SS Great BritainSS 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...
.
The steam hammer
In 1837 the Great Western Steam Company was experiencing many problems forging the paddle shaft of the
SS Great BritainSS 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...
; 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-hammerA 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 hammerA 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
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
with a view to supplying the French arsenals and dockyards with tools and while he was there took the opportunity to visit the
Le CreusotLe 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'
anchorAn anchor is an object, often made out of metal, that is used to attach a ship to the bottom of a body of water at a specific point. There are two primary classes of anchors—temporary and permanent. A permanent anchor is often called a mooring, and is rarely moved; it is quite possible the vessel...
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.
Nasmyth subsequently applied the principle of his steam hammer to a
pile-driving machineA 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 July 3, 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 BridgeThe 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 TyneNewcastle upon Tyne is a city and metropolitan borough of Tyne and Wear, in North East England...
and the
NileThe Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world....
barrageA barrage may be* barrage , a line or barrier of artillery or depth charge fire* barrage , a weir or artificial obstruction at the mouth of a tidal watercourse...
at
AswanAswan, formerly spelled Assuan, is a city in the south of Egypt, the capital of the Aswan Governorate....
,
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
.
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 Nasmyth Gaskell & Co's revenues.
Other inventions
Apart from the steam hammer Nasmyth created several other important machine tools, including the
shaperA shaper is a machine tool used for shaping or surfacing metal and other material.Shapers have been largely superseded by milling machines or grinding machines in modern industrial practice. The basic function of a shaper machine is still sound and tooling for them is minimal and very cheap to...
, an adaptation of the
planerA planer is a type of metalworking machine tool that is analogous to a shaper, but larger, and with the entire workpiece moving beneath the cutter, instead of the cutter moving above a stationary workpiece...
which is still used in tool and die making. Another innovation was a
hydraulic pressA hydraulic press is a hydraulic mechanism for applying a large lifting or compressive force. It is the hydraulic equivalent of a mechanical lever, and is 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.
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 in Kent where he renamed his retirement home "Hammerfield" and happily pursued his various hobbies including
astronomyAstronomy is the scientific study of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere...
. He built his own 20-inch
reflecting telescopeThe Nasmyth telescope is a reflecting telescope developed by James Nasmyth. It is a modified form of a Cassegrain telescope, mounted on an alt-azimuth mount....
and made detailed observations of the
MoonThe Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is , about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The common centre of mass of the system is located at about —a quarter the Earth's...
. He co-wrote
The Moon : Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite with
James CarpenterJames 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
craterIn 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 toolA machine tool is a powered mechanical device, typically used to fabricate metal components of machines by machining, which is the selective removal of metal. The term machine tool is usually reserved for tools that used a power source other than human movement, but they can be powered by people if...
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 UniversityHeriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, is the eighth-oldest higher education institution in the United Kingdom originating as the School of Arts of Edinburgh in 1821. It received its university charter in 1966. The name commemorates George Heriot – the 16th century financier to King James,...
, in his birthplace of
EdinburghEdinburgh is the capital city of Scotland. It is the second largest Scottish city, after Glasgow, and the seventh-most populous in the United Kingdom. The City of Edinburgh Council is one of Scotland's 32 local government council areas....
, is called the James Nasmyth Building.
Further reading
External links