Henry Maudslay

Henry Maudslay (born Aug. 22, 1771, Woolwich, Kent, Eng.—died Feb. 14, 1831, London) was a British engineer and inventor of the metal lathe and other devices.

The son of a workman at the Woolwich Arsenal, Maudslay was apprenticed to Joseph Bramah, who manufactured locks. Maudslay soon became Bramah’s foreman, but, when refused an increase in pay, he left to go into business for himself. His first job was construction of machinery for the ship block (pulley) factory of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel. Over the next 30 years he invented machines of fundamental importance to the Industrial Revolution; of these the metal lathe is perhaps the most outstanding. He also invented methods for printing calico cloth and for desalting seawater for ships’ boilers, and he perfected a measuring machine that was accurate to 0.0001 inch. He was the first to realize the critical importance in a machine shop of accurate plane surfaces for guiding the tools; he produced for his workmen standard planes so smooth that they adhered when placed atop each other and could be separated only by sliding. He also designed and built a great number of stationary and marine engines.

Several of the outstanding British engineers of the Victorian period, notably James Nasmyth and Sir Joseph Whitworth, learned their profession in Maudslay’s shop.