Precision machine tools (Portsmouth Block Mills)
Máquinas herramienta de precisión (fábrica de bloques de Portsmouth)
- Date
- 1803-1808 · confidence high
- Place
- Portsmouth, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- Henry Maudslay and Marc Isambard Brunel
- People
- 👤 Henry Maudslay1771–1831👤 Marc Isambard Brunel1769–1849
- Field
- Tools
What it is
A set of 45 specialised machines that produced 130,000 pulley blocks a year for the Royal Navy using ten unskilled workers instead of 110 craftsmen. The first fully mechanised mass-production line.
Design by Brunel, mechanical execution by Maudslay; the naval engineer Samuel Bentham was the driving force behind the project.
What it led to
- The concept of serial production with specialised machines
- The deskilling of craft labour
- The Royal Navy's logistical capacity in the Napoleonic Wars
- Production engineering as a discipline
Built on
- Screw-cutting lathe with slide rest1797-1800
- Rotative steam engine