Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 51.djvu/128

120 practice was "to employ intelligent, well-conducted young lads, the sons of laborers or mechanics, and advance them by degrees according to their merits. They took charge of the smaller machine tools, by which the minor details of the machines in progress were brought into exact form. . . . A spirit of emulation was excited among them. They vied with each other in executing their work with precision. Those who excelled were paid an extra weekly wage. In course of time they took pride not only in the quantity but in the quality of their work, and in the long run became skillful mechanics. . . . The best of them remained in our service, because they knew our work and were pleased with their surroundings; while we, on our part, were always desirous of retaining the men we had trained, because we knew we could depend upon them."

The rapid extension of railroad construction, and the orders that consequently came in, led to much attention being given at Bridgewater to the building of locomotives, for which the machine tools used there gave great advantages. The Great Western Railway Company ordered twenty large engines, offering to add £100 to the contract price of each if they proved satisfactory. The premiums came, and with them a letter from the board of directors of the company offering to stand as references as to the quality of Messrs. Nasmyth and Gaskell's work. The Great Western Railway Company having successfully dispatched its steamship Great Western between Bristol and New York, and having elected to construct another steamer, the Great Britain, procured tools for making the engines from the Bridgewater Foundry. They were perplexed, however, about the forging of the intermediate paddle shaft, which was to be of a size never before attempted. They applied to Mr. Nasmyth, and he devised the steam hammer, the most famous of his inventions—an instrument with which, as he says in his autobiography, the workman might, "as it were, think in blows. He might deal them out on to the ponderous glowing mass and mold or knead it into the desired form as if it were a lump of clay; or pat it with gentle taps, according to his will, or at the desire of the forgeman." All was going well for setting the hammer in operation, when the plan of the vessel was changed by the introduction of the screw propeller, which rendered the immense shaft unnecessary. No patent was taken out for this invention, but the drawings of it were kept in the shop, open to the inspection of visitors. Among those who looked at them were M. Schneider, and M. Bourdon, his foreman, of the great iron works at Creuzot, France. A few years afterward, when Mr. Nasmyth visited Creuzot, he admired the excellence of a certain piece of machinery, and asked M. Bourdon how the crank had been forged. M. Bourdon