workman's abbreviation of the word "abductor," applied to it from the purpose which it answers; or may have been given from a vulgar use of the words "to doctor," meaning to set to rights. The color being thus left only in the engraved pattern, the piece of calico or muslin is drawn tightly over the cylinder, which revolves in the same direction, and prints the cloth. After the piece is printed it passes over several metallic boxes, six feet long, ten inches broad, and six inches deep, heated by steam, which dry it. A piece of cloth may be thus printed and dried in one or Hand and two minutes, which by the old method would have required cylinder printing compared the application of the block 448 times. Nor is this all. Two, three, four, and even five cylinders may be used at the same time in one press, each cylinder having engraved upon it a different portion of the pattern, and being supplied with a different color. The piece passes over them successively, and receives the entire pattern almost in the same moment. To produce the same effect by hand block printing would have required 896, 1344, 1792, or 2240 applications of the block, according as two, three, four, or five cylinders may have been employed. The saving of labor, therefore, is immense : one of the cylinder printing machines, attended by a man and a boy, is actually capable of producing as much work as could be turned out by one hundred block printers and as many tear boys. In consequence of the wonderful facility given to the operation, three fourths of all the prints executed in this country are printed by the cylinder machine... One of the striking facts of the Industrial Revolution is the way in which inventions in one branch of industry stimulate and make necessary inventions in many other branches. For example, machinery has constantly to be devised to make machinery until there seems to be no end to the process. This inherent tendency of machinery to conquer all industries was early noted by Karl Marx,1 who was an acute observer of the industrial progress which 1 See The Development of Modern Europe, Vol. II, pp. 396 sqq. 207. The way in which Modern in a revolution in transporta he saw going on around him in England during his residence there from 1848 to his death in 1883. A radical change in the mode of production in one sphere of industry involves a similar change in other spheres. This happens at first in such branches of industry as are connected together by being distinct steps in the manufacture of a single article, cloth for instance, and yet are separated by the division of labor in such a way that at each step an independent commodity is produced. Thus spinning by machinery made weaving by machinery a necessity, and both together made imperative the mechanical and chemical revolution that took place in bleaching, printing, and dyeing. So too, on the other hand, the revolution in cotton spinning called forth the invention of the gin for separating the seeds from the cotton fiber; it was only by means of this invention that the production of cotton became possible on the enormous scale at present required. But more especially, the revolution in the modes of producdustry makes tion of industry and agriculture made necessary a revolution in the means of communication and of transportation. These, in tion necessary the form in which they had been handed down from the earlier period, became unbearable trammels on modern industry, with its feverish haste of production, its enormous extent, its constant flinging of capital and labor from one sphere of production into another, and its newly established connections with the markets of the whole world. Hence, apart from the radical changes introduced in the construction of sailing vessels, the means of communication and transportation became gradually adapted to the modes of production of mechanical industry, by the creation of a system of river steamers, railways, ocean steamers, and telegraphs. But the huge masses of iron that had now to be forged, to be welded, to be cut, to be bored, and to be shaped, demanded, on their part, monster machines, for the construction of which the methods of the manufacturing period were utterly inadequate. Modern industry had therefore itself to take in hand the machine, its characteristic instrument of production, and to to make construct machines by machines. It was not till it did this, The use of that it built up for itself a fitting technical foundation and stood machinery on its own feet. Machinery, simultaneously with the increasing machinery use of it, in the first decades of this century, appropriated by degrees the fabrication of machines proper. But it was only during the decade preceding 1866 that the construction of railways and ocean steamers on a stupendous scale called into existence the cyclopean machines now employed in the construction of "prime movers," or motors. The most essential condition for the production of machines The slide rest by machines was a prime mover capable of exerting any amount for the turning lathe of force, and yet under perfect control. This condition was already supplied by the steam engine, but at the same time it was necessary to produce the geometrically accurate straight lines, planes, circles, cylinders, cones, and spheres, required in the detail parts of the machines. This problem Henry Maudsley solved in the first decade of this century by the invention of the slide rest, a tool that was soon made automatic, and in a modified form was applied to other constructive machines besides the lathe, for which it was originally intended. This mechanical appliance replaces not some particular tool but the hand itself, which must, in order to produce a given form, hold and guide the cutting tool along the iron or other material operated upon. Thus it became possible to produce the individual parts of machinery with a degree of ease, accuracy, and speed that no accumulated experience of the hand of the most skilled workman could give. tool Thus when we fix our attention on the machinery employed The machine in the construction of machines, we find the manual imple- only a giant ments reappearing, but on a grand scale. For instance, the cutting part of the boring machine is an immense drill driven by a steam engine; without this machine, the cylinders of large steam engines and of hydraulic presses could not be made. The mechanical lathe is only a gigantic reproduction of the ordinary foot lathe; the planing machine, an iron carpenter, that works on iron with the same tools that the human carpenter employs on wood; the instrument that, on the London wharves, cuts the veneers, is a gigantic razor; the tool of the 208. Lord Jeffrey's account of his friend the inventor of the steam engine shearing machine, which shears iron as easily as a tailor's scissors cut cloth, is a monster pair of scissors; and the steam hammer works with an ordinary hammer head, but of such a weight that not even the god Thor himself could wield it. These steam hammers are an invention of Nasmyth, and there is one that weighs over six tons and strikes with a vertical fall of seven feet, on an anvil weighing thirty-six tons. It is mere child's play for it to crush a block of granite into powder, yet it is no less capable of driving, with a succession of light taps, a nail into a piece of soft wood. Section 55. The Steam Engine James Watt, who brought the steam engine to such perfection that it could be used economically for mechanical industries, was a man of many interests and striking personal characteristics, and his good temper and versatility won for him the profound admiration of many warm friends. One of these, Lord Jeffrey, editor of The Edinburgh Review and a man of literary distinction, wrote the following charming account of the inventor when he received the news of his death in 1819. We have said that Mr. Watt was the great improver of the steam engine; but, in truth, as to all that is admirable in its structure, or vast in its utility, he should rather be deJames Watt, scribed as its inventor. It was by his inventions that its action was so regulated as to make it capable of being applied to the finest and most delicate manufactures, and its power so increased as to set weight and solidity at defiance. By his admirable contrivance it has become stupendous alike for its force and its flexibility; for the prodigious power which it can exert, and the ease, and precision, and ductility with which it can be varied, distributed, and applied. The trunk of an elephant, that can pick up a pin or rend an oak, is as nothing to it. It can engrave a seal and crush masses of obdurate metal before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as a gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin and forge anchors, cut steel into ribbons and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the winds and the waves. It would be difficult to estimate the value of the benefits The manifold which these inventions have conferred upon this country. results of the steam engine There is no branch of industry that has not been indebted to them; and, in all the most material, they have not only widened most magnificently the field of its exertions, but multiplied a thousandfold the amount of its productions. . . . It has increased indefinitely the mass of human comforts and enjoyments, and rendered cheap and accessible, all over the world, the materials of wealth and prosperity. It has armed the feeble hand of man, in short, with a power to which no limits can be assigned; completed the dominion of mind over the most refractory qualities of matter; and laid a sure foundation for all those future miracles of mechanic power which are to aid and reward the labors of after generations. It is to the genius of one man, too, that all this is mainly owing; and certainly no man ever bestowed such a gift on his kind. The blessing is not only universal, but unbounded; and the fabled inventors of the plow and the loom, who were deified by the erring gratitude of their rude contemporaries, conferred less important benefits on mankind than the inventor of our present steam engine. mental This will be the fame of Watt with future generations; and Watt's it is sufficient for his race and his country. But to those to remarkable whom he more immediately belonged, who lived in his society faculties and enjoyed his conversation, it is not, perhaps, the character in which he will be most frequently recalled, most deeply lamented, or even most highly admired. Independently of his great attainments in mechanics, Mr. Watt was an extraordinary, and in many respects a wonderful, man. Perhaps no individual in his age possessed so much and such varied and exact information, had read so much, or remembered what he had read so accurately and well. He had infinite quickness of apprehension, a prodigious memory, and a certain rectifying and methodizing power of understanding, which extracted something precious out of all that was presented to it. |