I had a look through some of my books to find the oldest references to ‘engine lathe’. I think if someone did enough research, the origins of ‘engine lathe’ could be discovered. In more recent years we seem to have narrowed the meaning of the word “engine”. What is needed is some research to discover its meaning in older times. Unfortunately I don’t have enough old books to do this properly. Nothing definitive to report, but I did come across the word ‘engine” used in various other descriptions:
“Early Engineering Reminiscences (1815-40) of George Escol Sellers” gives interesting first hand engineering experiences from Philadelphia, visits to England (e.g. visiting the Maudslay works, Donkin’s etc. Sellers met Mr Brunel (senior or junior?) at Maudslay’s, so got a tour of the workings of the then incomplete Thames Tunnel.
While discussing Jacob Perkins and bank-note engraving, he discusses the ingenious geometrical lathe or rose engine of Asa Spencer. There is an illustration from the London Journal of Arts and Sciences (1820) with a quoted description: “Engine lathe for engraving oval or geometrical figures upon metal or other surfaces”. This lathe is quite specialised, it has a swinging headstock, oval chuck etc for geometrical work, certainly not intended for steam engine work.
Sellers was also involved around this time with “fire engines”, that is pumps and hoses used for fire fighting.
In “Henry Maudslay & the Pioneers of the Machine Age” there is an advertisement from the Manchester Guardian, (1821), placed by Richard Roberts – “Lathe, Screw, Screw-Engine, Screw Stock, &c., &c., Manufacturer. It doesn’t include the description “engine lathe”, but speaks of his new “Cutting Engines” at work making Bevil, Spur, or Worm Geer, of any size and pitch…, also his “Improved Screw Engine” making screws of all Sorts, Pitches, or sizes with the greatest accuracy.
Also mentioned in this book is the “Difference Engine” of Charles Babbage, a mechanical computer.
The “Short History of Technology” briefly describes Maudslay’s famous screw-cutting lathe of 1800, which “used a lead-screw, as in the fusee-engine, linked with the headstock through gear-wheels” etc.
As to the idea that engine lathes were developed for building engines: this book reckons that clock and instrument making were the major influence on early machine tool improvement, in particular the need for precision. “The lathe, the oldest machine-tool, is of unknown antiquity, but it was not until about 1700 that it became really useful for accurate work”. Clockmakers developed the first precision lathes. In the 1700’s there was an urgent need for instruments for marine navigation, chronometers for timekeeping and surveying instruments for the great increase in engineering projects of the time (roads, canals etc).
Jesse Ramsden, the English instrument maker, made the first satisfactory screw cutting lathe in 1770. At the same time there was a need for accurately graduated scales, therefore “dividing engines” were built, Ramsden again building the first dividing engine suitable for work on an industrial scale.
Apart from the boring of engine cylinders (on machinery first developed for boring cannon barrels), steam engines were often built without machine tools for a century or more after their invention in 1712, in fact in the USA, it was not until around 1850 that machine tools came into common usage for building steam engines.
According to the American historian of technology, Louis Hunter, the engine lathe…”is driven by mechanical power and for this reason early became called engine-lathes. The engine lathe is also automatic in operation.” That means it had a self-acting slide rest, as opposed to a hand lathe, which also could be power driven, yet not be an engine lathe. Hunter says “in the fully developed engine lathe with slide rest holder, commonly associated with the British Engineer Henry Maudslay..”
