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The Two Faces of Democracy
The Two Faces of Democracy
Decentering Agonism and Deliberation

MARY F. SCUDDER
AND
STEPHEN K. WHITE
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the
University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing
worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and
certain other countries.
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America.
© Oxford University Press 2023
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in
writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under
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reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department,
Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same
condition on any acquirer.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022058614
ISBN 978–0–19–762389–3 (pbk.)
ISBN 978–0–19–762388–6 (hbk.)
ISBN 978–0–19–762391–6 (epub)
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197623886.001.0001
 Molly dedicates this book to Jack

Stephen dedicates this book to his grandson,

Jones Kieffer Dunay

 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

1. Introduction: The Challenge of Imagining Democracy Today

2. The Deliberative Turn and U-Turn in Democratic Theory

3. The Deliberative Face

4. The Agonistic Face

5. Re-envisioning the Core of Democracy

6. An Exemplary Scene of the Moral Equality of Voice

7. Conclusion: The Communicative Model of Democracy

Bibliography
Index
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Stephen and I began work on this book in the Summer of 2020. At

the time, we each were working on papers independently,
exchanging them with each other for comments. My paper sought to
defend the normative core of deliberative democracy while
acknowledging the limitations of deliberativists’ responses to
compelling critiques. Stephen was investigating how the clearly
valuable democratic insights carried by some variants of agonism
have been subtly undermined by certain framings of that tradition.
Taking a step back, we realized that both of our papers pointed to
the need for a fuller understanding of what we call the “two faces of
democracy.” By joining together we intended to articulate how to
best comprehend those two faces and explain why we feel the
persistent, intuitive force of each. We hope this book achieves these
goals.
In those early days of the project, I was emailing Stephen from
the road. After months of isolation due to the COVID-19 pandemic,
Kyle, Lola (eighteen months old), and I set out on a contactless road
trip from Indiana to California. Once we arrived in Sonoma, we
formed a pod and childcare co-op with my sister, her family, and my
parents. Without their help, especially that of my mom and dad,
John and Judy Scudder, I would not have had the time or energy to
begin working on this project. I am so grateful for the love and
assistance they provided my family and me. I also want to
acknowledge the care shown to us by Bonnie and Tim Haynes
whose willingness to drive thirteen hours for a visit never ceases to
amaze me.
My colleagues and friends at Purdue have improved my ideas as
much as my day-to-day life. A special thanks to Tara Grillos for the
sustained friendship and speedy advice she has provided me these
past years. I am indebted to my mentors Rosie Clawson and Nadia
Brown, two Academic Moms who have worked tirelessly to make our
department and our discipline more diverse and inclusive. I am lucky
to have them as role models and mentors. I am also thankful to
have Valeria Sinclair-Chapman as a colleague and friend. In many
ways, she embodies the two faces of democracy, always seeming to
know when to resist and when to cooperate to achieve shared goals.
I am grateful to my comrade-in-writing, Ann Clark, for talking me
through the highs and lows of the academic writing process. Jimena
Cosso and Macarena Guerrero, as well as their respective partners,
my colleagues, Giancarlo Visconti and Reed Kurtz, have been great
cheerleaders as I tried to write with a new baby in a pandemic. I am
grateful to have them and their families in my life.
I presented some of the material in the book at the University of
Virginia’s Political Theory Colloquium in November 2020. I thank the
participants and my discussant, Ferdinand Flagstad, for their
comments and suggestions. I also want to thank Michael MacKenzie
and Patricia Boling for feedback they provided on earlier drafts of
portions of this manuscript. I appreciate the permission to reprint
material previously published in Mary F. Scudder, “Deliberative
Democracy, More Than Deliberation,” Political Studies, Online First,
pp. 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217211032624.
I cannot imagine a better coauthor than Stephen. He was nothing
but supportive and understanding when chapters got held up on my
desk, including for the length of my parental leave in 2021. From the
energizing Zoom meetings to the constructive conversations via track
changes, writing this book with him has been a joy.
Finally, I would like to thank Kyle Haynes for his partnership. I am
not exaggerating when I say that I could not have survived having
two children on the tenure track if it were not for him (and his
coffee). He never doubted me for a second, and it made a world of
difference. Finding the time for me to work on this book was often a
team effort. Lola, too, was a great help in this regard. Her curiosity
and enthusiasm are contagious and her love for her baby brother
convenient. For my part, I dedicate the book to my son Jack
Scudder-Haynes who was born during its writing. Jack seems intent
on making me a morning person and deserves credit for his
persistence.

—Mary F. (Molly) Scudder

I presented some of the material in the book at the Political Theory

Colloquium, University of Virginia, September 2020 and at the
Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, September 2021. I thank
the participants for their many insights.
I appreciate the permission of the following publishers to reprint
material previously published: Sage Publications for reprinting
portions of Chapter 4 from Stephen K. White, “Agonism, Democracy,
and the Moral Equality of Voice,” Political Theory 50, no. 1 (Feb.
2022): 59–85; and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture for
reprinting portions of “A Democratic Mythic?,” The Hedgehog Review
24, no. 1 (Spring 2022).
Thanks to the following individuals who read and offered helpful
critical insights on some portion of the manuscript: Lawrie Balfour,
Kevin Duong, Rita Felski, Jill Frank, Bonnie Honig, George Klosko,
Brittany Leach, Lori Marso, Isaac Reed, Shalini Satkunanandan,
William Scheuerman, Jay Tolson, Rachel Wahl, and Robert Wylie. I
would especially like to thank those who provided more sustained
commentary on the project as a whole: Murad Idris, Tae-Yeoun
Keum, and Jaeyoon Park. Also, my appreciation goes to my coauthor,
Molly, who has been the ideal partner in this intellectual adventure.
We would both like to thank the two anonymous reviewers for
Oxford University Press and our highly skilled editors at the press,
Angela Chnapko and Alexcee Bechthold, who made the whole
process a pleasure.
Finally, I thank Pat for all her copyediting expertise, but even more
for being as wonderful a life companion as one could imagine.
—Stephen K. White
 1

Introduction

The Challenge of Imagining Democracy Today

When we think about classic moments we associate with democracy,

one or the other of two sorts of pictures usually comes to mind. One
is of public scenes where people are speaking, listening, debating,
arguing, voting. Vivid, classical instances include the agora in ancient
Athens, where democracy was born; scenes of town hall meetings in
colonial New England and televised “town hall” meetings today; or
the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. The other sort
of classic moment involves scenes of protest and resistance against
injustices perpetrated by tyrants or elites. Here we think of the
Tennis Court Oath at the beginning of the French Revolution, where
members of the Third Estate vowed not to be cowed by the king’s
efforts to shut down their meetings; the resistance that came to be
known as the Boston Tea Party or the Minutemen at Lexington and
Concord before the American Revolution; or the street
demonstrations against authoritarian rule in Egypt’s Tahrir Square in
2011 or during the “umbrella protest” in Hong Kong in 2014.
We might call these two portrayals of democratic life the two faces
of democracy. Although they present to us somewhat different
qualities, each captures essential intuitions about that political form,
and both are assumed to represent core ideals. The first face
portrays ideas of popular discussion, deliberation, and other
activities central to the life of a legitimate democratic order. The
second speaks to us about the necessity of oppositional protest
against efforts to hold back or undermine democratic political
arrangements, including protests that claim a legitimacy even when
they turn violent, as in the case of colonists’ actions leading up to
the Declaration of Independence.
In referring to the two faces of democracy, we don’t mean two
faces in the sense of the visages of two different people. Rather we
mean the different “faces” a single person may display at different
times; as when we say that a person’s face now shows anger but
later curiosity. In the case of a single actor, we would normally be
interested to know how the interaction between her character and
her circumstances might have given rise to a face that expressed
anger and then why it shifted to curiosity. Similarly, in the case of a
democratic society, we are interested in providing an account of why
a given set of circumstances should elicit activities that express one
face more than another.
We certainly affirm that the two faces are tied together through
their relation to comprehensive democratic intuitions and values, but
we are concerned that the character of that connection and its
underlying moral infrastructure are poorly understood. This lack of
clarity has become more evident and unsettling recently, both in the
world of real politics and in the efforts of scholars to conceptualize
democracy.
One reason for a sense of distress is that in contemporary politics
the face associated with classic instances of vehement democratic
resistance has been repeatedly coopted by movements on the
political right to advance ideas of white nationalism and other
disturbing political orientations in ways that corrode democratic
processes and the rule of law. In the last decade, right-wing,
populist groups appropriated the images and names of the Boston
Tea Party and the Minutemen. This process continued in the broader
movement associated with the rise of Donald Trump.1 The American
revolutionary flag picturing a snake coiled to strike against the boot
of tyranny has also become a popular vanity license plate for this
movement in a number of states. For many in these movements,
and the armed, self-styled “militias” that have metastasized in recent
decades, President Obama and the federal government became the
agents of tyranny, against whom righteous resistance was directed.
And that flag was flown proudly by the Trump supporters as they
stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the transition of
power mandated by the 2020 presidential election. In short, the
classic call to political resistance against supposed threats to
democracy has become increasingly associated with unprecedented
violations of deep democratic norms. Thus, one sort of pictorial
representation of democracy has become joined, on the right, with
activities that are decidedly undemocratic, if not proto-fascistic.
Unsurprisingly, there have been vigorous, recent efforts across the
political spectrum to push back against violations of basic democratic
norms. These have occurred in the streets, the popular media, and
academic publications. As one would expect, this upwelling has been
most prevalent in the broadly defined political left in the United
States. Concerns there accumulated into a flood of active and
sometimes violent resistance in the wake of the police killing of
George Floyd in May of 2020. As an illustration of such push back in
the media, consider a 2019 article in the New Republic, under the
title “Give War a Chance.” Alex Pareene speaks there of the growing
number of voices within the Democratic Party who have become
convinced of the need to meet the right’s “muscular and coherent
‘antagonistic’ approach to politics” with a comparable one on the left
that unapologetically divides the world into political friends and
enemies and urges us toward battle, as opposed to a more
traditional orientation toward respectful engagement and mutual
compromise.2 In relation to the two faces of democracy, the
affective force behind Pareene’s essay draws us to determinately
plant in the foreground the image of vehement and courageous
resistance to those who threaten the basic norms of democracy,
while backgrounding the picture of reason, deliberation, and
compromise across lines of political difference. The left and center
simply need to “give war a chance.”
If this distinctive foregrounding of one face of democracy is
relatively recent in practical politics in the U.S., its contemporary
intellectual roots extend somewhat further back. Pareene refers to
these when he mentions the growing influence of a Belgian political
theorist, Chantal Mouffe. Since the early 1990s, Mouffe has become
increasingly prominent (along with her now-deceased coauthor,
Ernesto Laclau) in several European countries as well as the U.S.3
This elevation is based on her consistently arguing that conflict and
resistance constitute the essential character—the ontology—of all
political life, an account that has come to be called “agonistic.” The
term “agonism” comes from the ancient Greek word, “agon,”
meaning conflict or contest.4 Mouffe is hardly alone in embracing
this orientation; she is part of a broader movement that has been
gaining strength among political thinkers for some time.
This intellectual shift toward agonism emerged at least partially in
reaction to the work of two of the most prominent political theorists
of the late twentieth century, John Rawls and Jürgen Habermas.
Rawls and Habermas came to be perceived as too tied to the
assumption that Western political orders were tolerably just, and
that the main job for political theory was to conceptually reconstruct
the foundations of that democratic legitimacy. This orientation was
apparent in Rawls’s immensely influential theory of justice and
Habermas’s account of deliberative democracy.5 For the critics, these
approaches offered idealized versions of liberal democratic orders
grounded in reason, deliberation, and consensus about just political
arrangements. Such works seemed to imply that any extant
injustices in such regimes were secondary matters to be
subsequently recognized and critically addressed on the basis of
these constructs. In effect, they decidedly foregrounded one face of
democracy: the one focused on reason, procedures, and debate.
Criticism of that broad intellectual strategy gathered momentum
through the 1990s and has taken a multitude of forms. Perhaps the
most significant commonality shared by these attacks on what has
come to be called “ideal theory” is the charge that it inevitably tends
to render secondary what should be primary. Such theory subtly
slides concerns about persisting forms of domination and injustice
into the background, thus providing an inflated sense of legitimation
to the status quo.
 This backgrounding, even if unintentional, runs the risk of giving
ideological cover to those harms, making them appear less pressing.
One of the first entrants onto this terrain of battle was Judith
Shklar’s 1990 The Faces of Injustice in which she argued for a global
reorientation of attention in political theory: we should start political
reflection from the patent reality of concrete instances of injustice
and the struggles against it, and not from hypothetical, complex
constructions of justice such as those of Rawls.6
Similar sentiments were expressed by many who began to style
themselves as “realists” and attack “ideal theory.”7 Despite its
popularity in recent years, what this movement substantively affirms
has never become quite as coherent as the character of its attacks.
After one has deflated the idealists, the actual normative direction in
which one should go has remained somewhat amorphous. Perhaps
this is one reason that the “agonist” version of realism has become
so popular: it seems to have a clearer shape and more vivid
character than the general calls to be more “realistic.”
“Agonism,” at least in its most emphatic form, is a specific variant
of realism that proffers not only the idea that we should pay more
attention to the conflictual elements of political life but also the
specific claim that the concept of politics itself is constituted by the
struggle of “friends” and “enemies.” And, proponents argue, the
sooner we acknowledge this reality, the better. This call has achieved
substantial resonance. As the editors of the American Political
Science Association journal, Perspectives on Politics, declared in
2019, we “inevitably” face an “agonistic conception of the political.”8
Moreover, as others contend, this should not disturb us because it is
now “uncontroversial” that agonism is a “democratic good.”9
In sum, we are in an era in which one face of democracy has, for
many, increasingly receded into the background of public
consciousness, while the other has moved into the foreground. Now,
on one level, this is part of an expectable ebb and flow of
democratic life; at any given time, one face will seem more relevant
and appropriately prominent than the other. But, on a second level
of reflection, there may be grounds for not being entirely
comfortable with the present state of affairs. As we have indicated,
the current shift toward the face of conflict and resistance has been
accompanied on the political right with a deeply disturbing slide
toward actions that undermine basic democratic norms. And many of
those involved in this slide seem to have placed themselves, even if
only tacitly, on a path of self-justification that affirms potential
democratic losses so long as they allow for the subduing of those
who are now defined as their enemies.10
This phenomenon raises a challenge for all those committed to
democracy. Clearly, there must be protracted contestation of this
antidemocratic onslaught from the right. As citizens and academics,
we wholeheartedly affirm this stance of resistance. But we also think
it is wise to consider an intimately related question: Could there be
some danger in this fight that our warranted contestation might also
begin to corrode commitments to democratic norms? For some on
the political right, resentment and self-righteousness are so
intertwined with perceptions of warfare that they seem to miss the
danger of such corrosion. Should combatants on the center and left
feel immaculately immune from a comparable toxic amalgam of
ideas and affects?
There have certainly been sobering examples in the past of leftist
groups, like the Red Army Faction in Germany and the Weather
Underground in the U.S. in the 1970s, who espoused the necessity
of exterminating their enemies in democratic societies. Fortunately,
there are few such movements now on the left. And with the
electoral defeat of Trump in 2020, it could be that the immediate
danger on the right will recede somewhat in the U.S., if not in other
democratic countries such as Hungary. Little is certain at this point.
Perhaps this juncture in the career of virulent forms of agonism
provides us with a timely opportunity to reflect more carefully on the
implicit pull of its corrosive framing of political life, without at the
same time inordinately downgrading the enduring significance of the
second face of democratic life with its portrayal of contestation and
resistance.
 But even if this sort of global practical relevance of our project
seems apt, these concerns may still appear to be relatively academic
and remote from grassroots-level politics. For a given group of
protesters in the streets or a community organization resisting some
palpable injustice, any mandate of attunement to both faces of
democracy may understandably seem to be a remote matter of
concern only to intellectuals. Only the agonistic face will be
immediately relevant. In relation to questions of immediate strategy,
this may be entirely correct. But if, in such cases, we expand the
time frame or scope of actors involved, then the issues revolving
around the other face will likely begin to seep into the relevant
problem space. For example, questions about internal group
structure and strategy may need to be extensively debated, as well
as ones about the character of relations with other groups affirming
somewhat different priorities. In these contexts, appeals that have
recourse to normative criteria associated with the first face will likely
surface. And if that expansion of concerns is actively precluded, it is
probably an indicator that the group is trying to freeze out a kind of
questioning intrinsic to a healthy democracy.
In short, there are ample practical reasons to inquire into the
relation between the two faces. But the task of moving from this
simple declaration to a lucid explanation of the connectedness of the
two faces within the democratic imagination is no simple matter. Our
book undertakes this task by trying to make clearer and more
compelling the grounds upon which the two pictures, as well as the
intuitions they embody, are interrelated. This requires a better
theorization of the core normative commitments of democracy. We
might think of this knot of commitments as functioning something
like the role of character in understanding why a given individual’s
face shows anger in certain circumstances but shifts to curiosity as
those circumstances change; only here we will be trying to sketch
what one might call the character of an admirable democratic
political actor.
Toward that end we begin by exploring the two perspectives that
offer the best insights into each face. For the face of conflict and
contestation, we consider the agonistic turn in democratic theory,
looking for the most persuasive formulations that have emerged. For
the face of reason and debate, we consider the tradition of
deliberative democracy, looking for a version that could offer
openings to the insights of agonism. Our ultimate aim is to articulate
a distinct account of democracy, from the perspective of which one
can assess the character, strengths, and limitations of both
perspectives, revising each as necessary in order to illuminate how
they might be persuasively imagined as existing in a relationship
characterized by both tension and congruence.
Any effort to bring these two perspectives into alignment will likely
have to confront the criticism that one or the other is subtly being
accorded priority. This strikes us as a useful sort of initial suspicion
of any attempt to do justice to both. In our case, many will suspect
that the deliberative model is being assigned an initial privilege. And,
in a way, it is. But the real test of whether our effort is successful is
not where it starts, but whether our partially deliberative starting
point can be integrated ultimately into a convincing way of
comprehending the two pictures of democracy and the sorts of
intuitions and values implied by both. That is what we hope to
achieve by the end of the book.
For some, a figure prominent at our starting point will be
maximally suspicious: Jürgen Habermas. After all, his account of
deliberation, according to critics, is one of the primary poster
children for one-sided accounts of democracy. Although there is
some truth in this claim, there is just as much in the way of
distortion. What we will offer is a partial borrowing from, but also a
distinct revision of, what is at the core of his thought. Conceptually,
we start from his theory of “communicative action,” rather than his
specific idea of deliberation, with the intention of showing how the
latter needs to be seen as derivative from a broader conception of
normativity and interaction. Ultimately, this approach to democracy
might be better called “communicative” than “deliberative” because
it is oriented around the implicit norms that circulate in the linguistic
intersubjectivity through which modern social life is symbolically
reproduced. Iris Marion Young tried to signal her distance from the
deliberative model by announcing a preference for the term
“communicative democracy.”11 She was an early admirer of
Habermas’s approach to communicative action generally, as it
emerged out of the central concerns of the Frankfurt School, but she
was also consistently critical of the way the term “deliberative
democracy” threatened to reduce our scope of critical vision. We
share her sentiments, as well as her terminological preference. And,
following that general tack, we aim to further develop a basis for
conceptualizing democracy that decenters both the deliberative
perspective and the agonistic one, with its greater focus on
contestation and resistance.
When the term “deliberative democracy” is used today it refers to
a broad movement in recent decades to center one’s assessment of
democracy more precisely on the quality of the processes through
which individuals come to discuss, debate, and mutually justify their
respective stances before voting or taking other sorts of political
action. Perhaps the most famous encapsulation of this slant is the
general idea that the discursive means by which a majority becomes
a majority in a democracy is just as important as the fact that a
majority has voted in one way or the other.12 The movement to give
such concerns a guiding role in our thinking about democracy has,
over the last three decades, become a full-scale research tradition in
the sense of encompassing a multitude of publications, research
groups, and practical experiments designed to enhance deliberation
about significant public issues, both in the U.S. and around the
world. But, as we indicated above, this movement has also spawned
an enormous amount of opposition that generally accuses it of
emphasizing too heavily only what we have called the first face of
democracy and thereby obfuscating how power operates
inconspicuously to keep various issues and groups out of forums of
deliberation. In short, deliberative democrats systematically draw our
attention away from the connotations, affects, and motivations
associated with the second face of democratic life.
As noted earlier, the agonistic turn in democratic theory emerged
partially out of this context of critique and partially out of a general
feeling that leading liberal democracies today should not be
accorded the benefit of the doubt in being identified as moderately
just, given persisting racial and ethnic injustices, as well as the rapid
growth of economic inequality since the late 1970s. Perspectives on
justice and democracy that do not front-load such concerns need to
be replaced by ones that make conflict and resistance to elites the
starting point and center of attention. Agonism has been fleshed out
in a variety of ways, but they all share this general motivation to
accord an emphatic prominence to the resistant face of democracy.
Despite the warranted sense of achievement that is shared by
proponents of this new prominence, the question that emerges with
this reversal of status between the two faces is whether we now get
any better comprehension of the relationship between them than we
did when the first face was given unquestioned prominence.13 The
goal of this book is to provide a persuasive answer to this question
in a way that grants one-sided prominence to neither but sees both
as intertwined with a common normative core; our preference for
the term “communicative democracy” is intended to highlight this
reorientation.
As we pursue this goal, it is important to emphasize that the role
we envision for our efforts is not reducible to that of a peace
negotiator who strives simply to bring two antagonists to some
negotiated end of hostilities. Others have chosen that strategy,
seeking to find a way to have these opponents simply “converge in
the middle sharing similar values.”14 In contrast, we attempt to
articulate an independent, constructive perspective on democracy
and its moral core that provides a distinctive viewpoint, from the
perspective of which one can then relocate the significance of both
the agonistic and deliberative approaches.
Chapter 2 begins with a broad attempt to construe the deliberative
approach in such a way that it can be taken as the best
representative of the first face of democracy, and thus the fittest
contender among competing conceptions of democracy to take on
the challenge of agonism. Accordingly, we will offer an account of
the emergence of the deliberative perspective around 1990, as it
appears in Habermas and others, consider its evolving shape over
time, and evaluate some of the ways it has responded to a variety of
specific criticisms.
Two criticisms, however, stand out as especially challenging and
thus worthy of separate and more sustained treatment. These are
global assaults on the whole enterprise of the deliberative
perspective, as opposed to the more specific criticisms examined in
Chapter 2. The first of these broader critiques surveys the train of
particular complaints against this perspective over the last couple
decades and concludes that the best way forward is to simply
abandon any emphasis on deliberation as the core concept
animating the first face. The problem, these critics argue, is that the
many efforts to save the deliberative perspective by expanding what
can count as “deliberation” end up amounting to nothing more than
“concept stretching.” In short, accumulating piecemeal modifications
of the model have so expanded the notion of deliberation as to
render it effectively useless.15 As a consequence, the idea of making
deliberation the centerpiece of democratic theory should just be
dropped. It makes better sense to simply return to an emphasis on
some of the more familiar ideals traditionally associated with
democracy, such as inclusion in agenda formation and decision-
making.16
In Chapter 3, we argue instead that the real problem lies with
those advocates of deliberative democracy who overly concentrate
attention on practices of deliberation and fail to comprehend
adequately the normative core that should animate this perspective
as a whole. That core, properly conceived, orients our understanding
of the deliberative model to its commitment to a complex, central
value, the moral equality of voice. On our interpretation this provides
a minimal conceptualization of both autonomy and equality. In
regard to the latter, it offers a way of conceptualizing how individual
autonomy necessarily opens into democratic autonomy. Chapter 3
focuses primarily on this last value, showing how understanding it
within our frame helps deliberative democrats decenter the specific
practice of deliberation. Deliberation can now be seen as one variant
of communication among a variety of others, each of which may play
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manufacture of textile machinery he added that of general machinery
and large tools for cutting, boring, rifling, planing and slotting. He had
a great reputation in his day, but his work seems to have been more
that of a builder of standard tools than an originator of new tools and
methods.
Charles Holtzapffel, another well-known engineer of that
generation, was the son of a German mechanic who came to
London in 1787. He received a good education, theoretical as well
as practical, and became a skilled mechanician and a tool builder of
wide influence. His principal book, “Turning and Mechanical
Manipulation,” published in 1843 in three volumes, is an admirable
piece of work. Covering a field much wider than its title indicates, it is
the fullest and best statement of the art at that time; and scattered
through it there is a large amount of very reliable mechanical history.
By 1840 the number of men engaged in tool building was
increasing rapidly, and it is impossible to consider many English tool
builders who were well known and who did valuable work, such as
Lewis of Manchester, B. Hick & Son of Bolton, and others. One
noteworthy man, however, ought to be mentioned—John George
Bodmer, who was neither an Englishman, nor, primarily, a tool
builder.[71] He was a Swiss who worked in Baden and Austria, as
well as in England, and his fertile ingenuity covered so many fields
that a list of the subjects covered by his patents occupy six pages in
the “Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers.”
[71] For a “Memoir” of Bodmer see “Transactions of the Institution of Civil
Engineers,” Vol. XXVIII, p. 573. London, 1868.

Bodmer was born at Zurich in 1786. After serving his

apprenticeship he opened a small shop for millwright work near that
city. A year or so later he formed a partnership with Baron d’Eichthal
and with workmen brought from St. Etienne, France, he started a
factory in an old convent at St. Blaise, in the Black Forest, first for
the manufacture of textile machinery and later, in 1806, of small
arms.
“Instead of confining himself to the ordinary process of gun-making
by manual labour, Mr. Bodmer invented and successfully applied a
series of special machines by which the various parts—more
especially those of the lock—were shaped and prepared for
immediate use, so as to insure perfect uniformity and to economise
labour. Amongst these machines there was also a planing machine
on a small scale; and Mr. Bodmer has been heard to observe how
strange it was that it should not have occurred to him to produce a
larger machine of the same kind, with a view to its use for general
purposes.”[72] He does not seem to have used the process of milling
until much later. Bodmer was thus among the first to discern and to
realize many of the possibilities of interchangeable manufacture, Eli
Whitney having begun the manufacture of firearms on the
interchangeable basis at New Haven, Conn., about 1800, only a few
years before. Why Bodmer’s attempt should have failed of the
influence which Whitney’s had is not quite clear. A possible
explanation may lie in the fact that the use of limit gauges does not
seem to have been a part of Bodmer’s plan. This use was
recognized by the American gun makers as an essential element in
the interchangeable system almost from the start.
[72] Ibid., p. 576. (The italics are ours.)

Bodmer was appointed, by the Grand Duke of Baden, director of

the iron works and military inspector with the rank of captain and for
a number of years much of his energy was given to the development
of small arms and field artillery. He invented and built a 12-pound
breech-loading cannon in 1814, which he had tested by the French
artillery officers. It failed to satisfy them, and was sent a few years
later to England, where it was decently buried by the Board of
Ordnance.
The following year he built a flour-mill at Zurich for his brother.
Instead of each set of stones being driven by a small waterwheel, all
the machinery connected with the mill was driven by a single large
wheel through mill gearing. The millstones were arranged in groups
of four. “Each set could be started and stopped separately, and was
besides furnished with a contrivance for accurately adjusting the
distance between the top and bottom stones. By means of a hoist of
simple construction, consisting in fact only of a large and broad-
flanged strap-pulley and a rope-drum, both mounted on the same
spindle (the latter being hinged at one end, so that it could be raised
and lowered by means of a rope), the sacks of grain or flour could be
made to ascend and to descend at pleasure, and the operatives
themselves could pass from one floor to any other by simply
tightening and releasing the rope.[73] The shafting of this mill was
made of wrought iron, and the wheels, pulleys, hangers, pedestals,
frames, &c., of cast iron, much in accordance with modern
practice.”[74] This was several years before Fairbairn and Lillie began
their improvements at Manchester.
[73] Apparently the modern belt conveyor.
[74] “Memoir,” p. 579.

Bodmer went to England for the first time in 1816 and visited all
the principal machine shops, textile mills and iron works. He returned
in 1824 and again in 1833, this time remaining many years. On his
second trip he established a small factory for the manufacture of
textile machinery at Bolton, in which was one of the first, if not the
first, traveling crane.[75] At the beginning of his last and long
residence in England, Bodmer appointed Sharp, Roberts &
Company makers of his improved cotton machinery, which they also
undertook to recommend and introduce. This arrangement was not
successful, and a few years later, in partnership with Mr. H. H. Birley,
Bodmer started a machine shop and foundry in Manchester for
building machinery.
[75] Ibid., p. 581.

Nearly all of the machinery for the Manchester plant was designed
and built by Bodmer himself and it forms the subject of two
remarkable patents, granted, one in 1839 and the other in 1841.[76]
The two patents cover in reality nearly forty distinct inventions in
machinery and tools “for cutting, planing, turning, drilling, and rolling
metal,” and “screwing stocks, taps and dies, and certain other tools.”
“Gradually, nearly the whole of these tools were actually constructed
and set to work. The small lathes, the large lathes, and the planing,
drilling, and slotting machines were systematically arranged in rows,
according to a carefully-prepared plan; the large lathes being
provided, overhead, with small traveling cranes, fitted with pulley-
blocks, for the purpose of enabling the workmen more economically
and conveniently to set the articles to be operated upon in the lathes,
and to remove them after being finished. Small cranes were also
erected in sufficient numbers within easy reach of the planing
machines, &c., besides which several lines of rails traversed the
shop from end to end for the easy conveyance on trucks of the parts
of machinery to be operated upon.”[77] There were, in addition to
these, however, “a large radial boring machine and a wheel-cutting
machine capable of taking in wheels of 15 feet in diameter, and of
splendid workmanship, especially in regard to the dividing wheel,
and a number of useful break or gap-lathes, were also constructed
and used with advantage. It is especially necessary to mention a
number of small, 6-inch, screwing lathes, which, by means of a
treadle acting upon the driving gear overhead, and a double slide-
rest—one of the tools moving into cut as the other was withdrawn,—
screw cutting could uninterruptedly proceed both in the forward and
in the backward motion of the toolslide, and therefore a given
amount of work accomplished in half the time which it would occupy
by the use of the ordinary means. Some of the slide-lathes were also
arranged for taking simultaneously a roughing and finishing cut.”[78]
[76] The first of these is described in the American Machinist of March
13, 1902, p. 369.
[77] “Memoir,” p. 588.
[78] Ibid., p. 597-598.

The latter part of Bodmer’s life was spent in and near Vienna,
working on engines and boilers, beet sugar machinery and
ordnance; and at Zurich, where he died in 1864, in his seventy-ninth
year.
Bodmer does not seem to have originated any new types of
machine tools, with the exception of the vertical boring-mill, which he
clearly describes, terming it a “circular planer.” It was little used in
England, and has been considered an American development.
It is hard now to determine how far Bodmer has influenced tool
design. It was much, anyway. Speaking of the patent just referred to,
John Richards, who has himself done so much for tool design, says,
“Here was the beginning of the practice that endured.” He has
described some of Bodmer’s tools in a series of articles which show
a standard of design greatly in advance of the practice of his time.[79]
Another writer says of Bodmer, “He seems always to have
thoroughly understood the problems he undertook to solve.” “One is
lost in admiration at the versatility of the inventive genius which could
at any one time—and that so early in the history of machine design
—evolve such excellent conceptions of what was needed in so many
branches of the mechanics’ art.”[80]
[79] American Machinist, Vol. XXII, pp. 352, 379, 402, 430, 457, 478,
507, 531, 559, 586, 607, 637.
[80] Ibid., Vol. XXV, p. 369.

Bodmer was elected a member of the Institution of Civil Engineers

in 1835, and his standing among his contemporaries is shown by the
fact that thirty-five pages in the “Transactions” of the Institution for
1868 are given to his memoir. For a foreigner to have won respect
and distinction in the fields of textile machinery, machine tools and
steam engines in England, where all three originated, was surely
“carrying coals to Newcastle.” Not only did he succeed in these
fields, but he invented the traveling crane, the chain grate for boilers,
the Meyer type of cut-off valve gear, the rolling of locomotive tires,
and introduced the system of diametral pitch, which was long known
as the “Manchester pitch,” from its having originated in his plant at
Manchester.
Though Bodmer was never regularly engaged in the building of
machine tools, his contribution to that field is far too great to be
forgotten.
 CHAPTER VIII
JAMES NASMYTH
We know more of the life of Nasmyth than of any of the other tool
builders. Not only did Smiles give an account of him in “Industrial
Biography,”[81] but fortunately Nasmyth was induced in later life to
write his recollections, which were published in the form of an
autobiography, edited by Smiles.[82] With the exception of Sir William
Fairbairn, he is the only great engineer who has done this. His
intimate knowledge of the rise of tool building, the distinguished part
he himself had in it, and his keen and generous appreciation of
others, make his record valuable. We have already quoted him in
connection with Maudslay, and wherever possible will let him tell his
own story.
[81] “Industrial Biography,” Chap. XV. Boston, 1864.
[82] “James Nasmyth, Engineer, An Autobiography,” edited by Samuel
Smiles. London, 1883.

Unlike most of the early mechanics, James Nasmyth came from a

family of distinction dating from the thirteenth century. They lost their
property in the wars of the Covenanters and his direct ancestors took
refuge in Edinburgh, leaving their impress on the city as the
architects and builders of many of its most famous and beautiful
buildings. Alexander Nasmyth, the father of James, was a well-
known artist, the founder of the Scotch School of Landscape
Painting, and a friend of Burns, Raeburn and Sir Walter Scott. He
was a landscape architect and enough of an engineer to be included
in Walker’s engraving of “The Eminent Men of Science Living in
1807-1808,” reproduced in Fig. 8. He invented the “bow-string” truss
in 1794, the first one of which was erected over a deep ravine in the
island of St. Helena, and also the setting of rivets by pressure
instead of hammering. This last, by the way, was the result of trying
to do a surreptitious job on Sunday without outraging the fearsome
Scotch “Sawbath.” Alexander Nasmyth was one of the six men on
the first trip made on Dalswinton Loch, October 14, 1788, by the
steamboat built by Symington for Patrick Miller. This was the second
trip of a steam-propelled vessel, the first one being that of John Fitch
on the Delaware, August 22, 1787. It was an iron boat with double
hulls and made about five miles an hour. It barely escaped being the
first iron vessel, as Wilkinson’s iron boat on the Severn was
launched less than a year before. The picture of this trial trip which
has come down to us was made by Alexander Nasmyth at the
time.[83]
[83] Ibid., pp. 28-31.

James Nasmyth was born in 1808, the tenth in a family of eleven

children. Like all of his brothers and sisters, he inherited his father’s
artistic tastes. If he had not been an engineer he would probably
have become distinguished as an artist. He was ambidextrous, and
to the end of his life his skill with his pencil was a constant source of
pleasure and convenience. The notebook in which the later record of
his mathematical ideas is contained, is crowded with funny little
sketches, landscapes, little devils and whimsical figures running in
and out among the calculations. The leaf in this book on which he
made his first memorandum of the steam hammer is shown in Fig.
23. In 1817, Watt, then in his eighty-first year, visited Edinburgh and
was entertained at the Earl of Buchan’s, where Alexander Nasmyth
met him at dinner. Watt delighted all with his kindly talk, and
astonished them with the extent and profundity of his information.
The following day Watt visited Nasmyth to examine his artistic and
other works. James Nasmyth, a nine-year-old boy, returning from
school, met him at the doorstep as he was leaving, and never forgot
the tall, bent figure of “the Great Engineer.”
 Figure 22. James Nasmyth
from an etching by paul rajon
 Nasmyth’s father had a private workshop which was well equipped
for those days. Nasmyth played there from childhood and had
mastered the use of all the tools while still a schoolboy. “By means of
my father’s excellent foot lathe,” he says, “I turned out spinning tops
in capital style, so much so that I became quite noted amongst my
school companions. They would give any price for them. The peeries
were turned with perfect accuracy, and the steel shod, or spinning
pivot, was centered so as to correspond with the heaviest diameter
at the top. They could spin twice as long as the bought peeries.
When at full speed they would ‘sleep,’ that is, turn round without a
particle of waving. This was considered high art as regarded top-
spinning.”[84] He established a brisk business in these, in small brass
cannon, and especially in large cellar keys, which he converted into
a sort of hand cannon, with a small touch-hole bored into the barrel
and a sliding brass collar which allowed them to be loaded, primed,
and then carried around in the pocket.
[84] Ibid., p. 89.

He haunted all the shops and foundries in the neighborhood,

making friends with the skilled workmen and absorbing the mysteries
of foundry work, forging, hardening and tempering, and those arts
which were handed down from man to man. Speaking of Patterson’s
old shop, Nasmyth says: “To me it was the most instructive school of
practical mechanics. Although I was only about thirteen at the time, I
used to lend a hand, in which hearty zeal made up for want of
strength. I look back on these days, especially to the Saturday
afternoons spent in the workshops of this admirably conducted iron
foundry, as a most important part of my education as a mechanical
engineer. I did not read about such things; for words were of little
use. But I saw and handled, and thus all the ideas in connection with
them became permanently rooted in my mind....
“One of these excellent men, with whom I was frequently brought
into contact, was William Watson. He took special charge of all that
related to the construction and repairs of steam engines,
waterwheels, and millwork generally. He was a skillful designer and
draughtsman and an excellent pattern maker. His designs were
drawn in a bold and distinct style, on large deal boards, and were
passed into the hands of the mechanics to be translated by them into
actual work.”[85]
[85] Ibid., p. 92.

After telling of various workmen, Nasmyth says: “One of the most

original characters about the foundry, however, was Johnie Syme.
He took charge of the old Boulton & Watt steam engine, which gave
motion to the machinery of the works.... Johnie was a complete
incarnation of technical knowledge. He was the Jack-of-all-trades of
the establishment; and the standing counsel in every out-of-the-way
case of managing and overcoming mechanical difficulties. He was
the superintendent of the boring machines. In those days the boring
of a steam engine cylinder was considered high art in excelsis!
Patterson’s firm was celebrated for the accuracy of its boring.
“I owe Johnie Syme a special debt of gratitude, as it was he who
first initiated me into that most important of all technical processes in
practical mechanism—the art of hardening and tempering steel.”[86]
From another of his friends, Tom Smith, Nasmyth picked up the
rudiments of practical chemistry, as it was then understood.
[86] Ibid., p. 93.

Traveling with his father from time to time, he had good

opportunities for meeting many distinguished engineers and of
visiting the great iron works, the most famous of which was the
Carron Iron Works. “The Carron Iron Works,” he writes, “are classic
ground to engineers. They are associated with the memory of
Roebuck, Watt, and Miller of Dalswinton. For there, Roebuck and
Watt began the first working steam engine; Miller applied the steam
engine to the purposes of navigation, and invented the Carronade
gun. The works existed at an early period in the history of British iron
manufacture. Much of the machinery continued to be of wood.
Although effective in a general way it was monstrously cumbrous. It
gave the idea of vast power and capability of resistance, while it was
far from being so in reality. It was, however, truly imposing and
impressive in its effect upon strangers. When seen partially lit up by
the glowing masses of white-hot iron, with only the rays of bright
sunshine gleaming through the holes in the roof, and the dark, black,
smoky vaults in which the cumbrous machinery was heard rumbling
away in the distance—while the moving parts were dimly seen
through the murky atmosphere, mixed with the sounds of escaping
steam and rushes of water; with the half-naked men darting about
with masses of red-hot iron and ladles full of molten cast-iron—it
made a powerful impression upon the mind.”[87]
[87] Ibid., p. 109.

By the time he was seventeen Nasmyth had become a skilled

model maker. While he was still attending lectures in the Edinburgh
School of Arts and in the University, he had built up quite a brisk
business in engine models, for which he charged £10 each. He
made his brass castings in his own bedroom at night, arranging a
furnace in his grate. He had a secret box of moulding sand and
rammed his patterns gently so as not to awaken his father who slept
below. In the morning the room would be all clean and gave no
indication that it was serving for a foundry as well as a bedroom, and
by some miracle he managed to complete his practical education
without burning down the house. In 1827, when he was nineteen, he
built a steam road carriage which ran about the streets of Edinburgh
for many months, but the condition of the Scotch roads was such as
to make a machine of this kind almost useless. When he went to
London he broke it up, and sold the engine and boiler for £67.
From inspecting the engines constructed by different makers,
Nasmyth became impressed with the superiority of those turned out
by the Carmichaels of Dundee. “I afterwards found,” he writes, “that
the Carmichaels were among the first of the Scottish engine makers
who gave due attention to the employment of improved mechanical
tools, with the object of producing accurate work with greater ease,
rapidity, and economy, than could possibly be effected by the hand
labor of even the most skillful workmen. I was told that the cause of
the excellence of the Carmichaels’ work was not only in the ability of
the heads of the firm, but in their employment of the best engineers’
tools. Some of their leading men had worked at Maudslay’s machine
shop in London, the fame of which had already reached Dundee,
and Maudslay’s system of employing machine tools had been
imported into the northern steam factory.”[88] These reports built up
an ambition, which developed into a passion, to go to London and
work in Maudslay’s shop under “this greatest of mechanics.”
[88] Ibid., p. 123.

Consequently, in the spring of 1829, he went with his father to

London and made application to Maudslay to work with him as an
apprentice. Maudslay told them in the friendliest way, but
unmistakeably, that he had had no satisfaction from gentleman
apprentices and that he had definitely settled that he would never
employ one again. He showed them about his shop, however, and
began to melt when he saw the boy’s keen interest and intelligent
appreciation of everything about him. Nasmyth had brought with him
some of his drawings and one of his engine models. At the end of
the visit he mustered courage to ask Maudslay if he would look at
them. The next day Maudslay and his partner looked them over. “I
waited anxiously. Twenty long minutes passed. At last he entered the
room, and from a lively expression in his countenance I observed in
a moment that the great object of my long cherished ambition had
been attained! He expressed, in good round terms, his satisfaction at
my practical ability as a workman engineer and mechanical
draughtsman. Then, opening the door which led from his library into
his beautiful private workshop, he said, ‘This is where I wish you to
work, beside me, as my assistant workman. From what I have seen,
there is no need of an apprenticeship in your case.’[89]
[89] Ibid., p. 129.

“Mr. Maudslay seemed at once to take me into his confidence. He

treated me in the most kindly manner—not as a workman or an
apprentice, but as a friend. I was an anxious listener to everything
that he said; and it gave him pleasure to observe that I understood
and valued his conversation. The greatest treat of all was in store for
me. He showed me his exquisite collection of taps and dies and
screw-tackle, which he had made with the utmost care for his own
service. They rested in a succession of drawers near to the bench
where he worked....
“He proceeded to dilate upon the importance of the uniformity of
screws. Some may call it an improvement, but it might almost be
called a revolution in mechanical engineering which Mr. Maudslay
introduced. Before his time no system had been followed in
proportioning the number of threads of screws to their diameter.
Every bolt and nut was thus a specialty in itself, and neither
possessed nor admitted of any community with its neighbors. To
such an extent had this practice been carried that all bolts and their
corresponding nuts had to be specially marked as belonging to each
other....
“None but those who lived in the comparatively early days of
machine manufacture can form an adequate idea of the annoyance,
delay, and cost of this utter want of system, or can appreciate the
vast services rendered to mechanical engineering by Mr. Maudslay,
who was the first to introduce the practical measures necessary for
its remedy.”[90]
[90] Ibid., pp. 131-132.

There was no place in all England where Nasmyth could have

learned more. He was in close personal contact with one of the best
mechanics in the world. He had Maudslay’s warmest personal
interest and heard all the discussions of the engineers and famous
men who used to come to the workshop. “Among Mr. Maudslay’s
most frequent visitors was Gen. Sir Samuel Bentham, Mr. Barton,
director of the Royal Mint, Mr. Bryan Donkin, Mr. Faraday, and Mr.
Chantrey, the sculptor. As Mr. Maudslay wished me to be at hand to
give him any necessary assistance, I had the opportunity of listening
to the conversation between him and these distinguished visitors. Sir
Samuel Bentham called very often. He had been associated with
Maudslay during the contrivance and construction of the block
machinery. He was brother of the celebrated Jeremy Bentham, and
he applied the same clear common sense to mechanical subjects
which the other had done to legal, social and political questions.
“It was in the highest degree interesting and instructive to hear
these two great pioneers in the history and application of mechanics
discussing the events connected with the block-making machinery.
In fact, Maudslay’s connection with the subject had led to the
development of most of our modern engineering tools. They may
since have been somewhat altered in arrangement, but not in
principle. Scarcely a week passed without a visit from the General.
He sat in the beautiful workshop, where he always seemed so
happy. It was a great treat to hear him and Maudslay fight their
battles over again, in recounting the difficulties, both official and
mechanical, over which they had so gloriously triumphed.”[91]
[91] Ibid., pp. 151-152.

While with Maudslay, Nasmyth designed and built an index milling

machine for finishing the sides of hexagon nuts. After Maudslay’s
death in 1831, he remained a few months with Mr. Field to finish
some work in hand, and then left to start in business for himself.
Nasmyth speaks in the kindliest terms of Mr. Field, and doubtless
would have had more to say about him if his relationship with
Maudslay had not been so close.
Joshua Field was a man to be appreciated. He was a draftsman at
the Portsmouth dockyard when the block machinery was being built,
and showed so clear a grasp of the work in hand that Bentham had
him transferred to the Admiralty at Whitehall. In 1804 he left the
service and went to Maudslay’s, when he was at Margaret Street
and employed about eighty men. He rose steadily, was taken into
partnership in 1822, at the same time as Maudslay’s eldest son, and
was the senior partner after Maudslay’s death when the firm was at
the height of its long prosperity. He was one of those consulted in the
laying of the Atlantic cable and in the designing of machinery for
doing it.
“Mr. Field was one of the founders of the Institution of Civil
Engineers, the origin of which was very humble. About the year
1816, Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, who was then a pupil of the late
Mr. Bryan Donkin, suggested to Mr. Field the idea of forming a
society of young engineers, for their mutual improvement in
mechanical and engineering science; and the earliest members were
Mr. Henry Robinson Palmer, Mr. William Nicholson Maudslay, and
Mr. Joshua Field. To these three were shortly added Mr. James
Jones, Mr. Charles Collinge, and Mr. James Ashwell. They met
occasionally in a room hired for the purpose, and to them were soon
attracted others having the same objects in view. Mr. Field was the
first chairman of the Institution, being elected to that post on the sixth
of January, 1818. Subsequently he became, in 1837, a vice-
president, an office he filled until he was elected president in 1848,
and in 1849, and he continued to the last to be an active member
and warm supporter of the Institution.”[92] Mr. Field did everything in
his power to give Nasmyth a start, allowing him to make the castings
for some machine tools which he proposed to finish later for use in
his own plant.
[92] Memoir, in “Transactions of the Institution of Civil Engineers,” Vol.
XXIII, p. 491. 1863.

Nasmyth returned to Edinburgh and took temporary quarters in a

little outbuilding 16 feet by 24 feet, within a few minutes’ walk of his
father’s home. He hired one mechanic, Archie Torry, who remained
with him the rest of his life and became one of his principal foremen.
His power plant consisted of one husky laborer who turned a crank.
Together they finished up the castings brought from Maudslay &
Field’s, making first a lathe, then a planer 20 inches by 36 inches,
and with these a few boring and drilling machines. He carried the
expense of this by doing some work for an enthusiastic inventor of a
wonderful rotary steam engine. Nasmyth honorably informed the
inventor that his machine would not work, but as the inventor was
bent on spending his money, Nasmyth executed the work for him,
and the proceeds enabled him to build his machinery.
In a few months he was ready to begin. He went to Liverpool and
Manchester looking for a location, and soon made many powerful
friends in both cities. In 1831 he rented a single floor in Manchester,
27 feet by 130 feet, with power, and ten days later Archie followed
with the tools. It was a particularly fortunate time and place for
starting such an enterprise. The success of the Liverpool &
Manchester Railway, just opened, created a great demand for
locomotives and for machine tools. Orders came in fast, and the
planer especially was busy all the time. If its profits were anything
like those of Clement’s planer, it must have been a very heavy
earner. As the business grew, Nasmyth added more tools, always
making them himself and steadily improving their design and
construction.
 He soon outgrew his quarters; and in 1836 he secured land at
Patricroft, a mile or so outside of the city, admirably located between
the new railway and the Bridgewater Canal, and built a new plant
which he called the Bridgewater Foundry. In the new foundry he
used the first worm-geared tilting pouring-ladle. As it eliminated a
common and very dangerous source of accidents, he refrained from
patenting it and in a short time its use was universal. He formed a
partnership with Holbrook Gaskell, who took the business end of the
enterprise, and the firm of Nasmyth & Gaskell had a very prosperous
career until, sixteen years later, Mr. Gaskell was forced to retire on
account of ill health.
Nasmyth built machine tools of all kinds. In 1836 he invented the
shaper which was long known as “Nasmyth’s Steel Arm.”
Descriptions and illustrations of some of Nasmyth’s tools may be
found at the end of his autobiography,[93] in Buchanan’s “Mill
Work,”[94] and in the American Machinist.[95] He patented but few of
his inventions, relying for protection mainly upon the reputation
which he soon established. “In mechanical structures and
contrivances,” he says, “I have always endeavored to attain the
desired purpose by the employment of the fewest parts, casting
aside every detail not absolutely necessary, and guarding carefully
against the intrusion of mere traditional forms and arrangements.
The latter are apt to insinuate themselves, and to interfere with that
simplicity and directness of action which is in all cases so desirable a
quality in mechanical structures. Plain common sense should be
apparent in the general design, as in the form and arrangement of
the details; and a character of severe utility pervade the whole,
accompanied with as much attention to gracefulness of form as is
consistent with the nature and purpose of the structure.”[96] This was
written in later life. While his later work was in thorough conformity
with these principles, it was some time before he freed himself from
the tradition of Greek style in machine frames. He was one of those,
however, who led the way into the more correct practice indicated
above, though he was probably not so influential in this direction as
Whitworth.
[93] p. 400 et seq.
[94] Volume of Plates.
 [95] Oct. 14, 1909, p. 654.
[96] Autobiography, p. 439.

His greatest invention unquestionably was that of the steam

hammer, which came about in an interesting way. He had built a
number of locomotives for the Great Western Railway. This railway
operated a line of steamers from Bristol to New York and was
planning a ship larger and faster than any then built, to be called
“The Great Britain.” It was to be a side-wheeler and the plans called
for a large and heavy paddle shaft, 30 inches in diameter. Mr.
Humphries, its designer, wrote to Nasmyth asking for help, saying so
large a shaft could not be forged with any of the hammers then in
use. Nasmyth saw at once the limitations of the prevailing tilt
hammer—which was simply a smith’s hand hammer, enlarged, with
a range so small that it “gagged” on large work,—and that the design
of large hammers must be approached in an entirely new way. “The
obvious remedy was to contrive some method by which a ponderous
block of iron should be lifted to a sufficient height above the object
on which it was desired to strike a blow, and then to let the block fall
down upon the forging, guiding it in its descent by such simple
means as should give the required precision in the percussive action
of the falling mass. Following up this idea,” he writes, “I got out my
‘Scheme Book,’ on the pages of which I generally thought out, with
the aid of pen and pencil, such mechanical adaptations as I had
conceived in my mind, and was thereby enabled to render them
visible. I then rapidly sketched out my steam hammer, having it all
clearly before me in mind’s eye. In little more than half an hour after
receiving Mr. Humphries’s letter narrating his unlooked-for difficulty, I
had the whole contrivance, in all its executant details, before me in a
page of my Scheme Book, a reduced photograph copy of which I
append to this description. (See Fig. 23.) The date of this first
drawing was the twenty-fourth of November, 1839....”[97]
[97] Ibid., p. 240.
Figure 23. First Sketch of the Steam Hammer Nov. 24, 1839
Figure 24. Model of the First Steam Hammer
 In the South Kensington Museum, London

“Rude and rapidly sketched out as it was, this, my first delineation

of the steam hammer, will be found to comprise all the essential
elements of the invention.[98] Every detail of the drawing retains to
this day the form and arrangement which I gave to it forty-three
years ago. I believed that the steam hammer would prove practically
successful; and I looked forward to its general employment in the
forging of heavy masses of iron. It is no small gratification to me now,
when I look over my rude and hasty first sketch, to find that I hit the
mark so exactly, not only in the general structure but in the details;
and that the invention as I then conceived it and put it into shape, still
retains its form and arrangements intact in the thousands of steam
hammers that are now doing good service in the mechanical arts
throughout the civilized world.”[99]
[98] Compare Nasmyth’s sketch, Fig. 23, with Fig. 24, which was taken
from the model of his first hammer now in the South Kensington Museum
(Exhibit No. 1571). The description of it in the catalog is as follows:
“It consists of a base plate with a large central opening through which
projects the top of the anvil, so that a blow on the anvil is not transmitted to
the base plate. On the plate are secured two standards which form guides
for the hammer-head or tup, and also support an overhead cylinder, the
piston of which is connected with the tup by a piston rod passing through
the bottom of the cylinder. Steam is admitted to this cylinder by a stop valve
in the form of a slide, and then by a slide valve on the front of the cylinder,
which by a hand lever can be moved so as to let steam in below the piston
and so raise the heavy tup. When it is lifted to a height proportionate to the
energy of the blow required, the steam is by the slide valve permitted to
escape and the hammer falls upon the forging placed on the anvil. The
cylinder is therefore only single-acting, but the top is closed, and a ring of
holes communicating with the exhaust pipe is provided at a little distance
down inside. In this way an air cushion is formed which helps to start the
piston downwards when a long stroke is being taken, and also the steam
below the piston is permitted to escape when the tup has been lifted as high
as it can safely go. Soon after its invention the steam hammer was greatly
increased in power by accelerating the fall of the tup by admitting steam
above the piston in the downstroke and so changing it into the usual
double-acting steam hammer.” Cat. Machinery Collection, Part II, p. 255.
[99] Autobiography, p. 242.