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Joseph Whitworth was born in Stockport, England. His father was a minister
and schoolmaster, which meant that he received somewhat more education than
many of the other great mechanics of his era. When he was fourteen, his father
sent him to work as a clerk in his uncle's cotton mill.
Whitworth disliked clerical work, preferring to work with machinery. He ran away from his uncle's after three years, finding work as a mechanic in a factory in Manchester. He eventually moved to London, finding work first with Maudslay's firm, then with an engineer named Holzapffel, and finally with Joseph Clement, before returning to Manchester in 1833 to set up his own business.
Whitworth became the first machine tool manufacturer. Others were making machine tools at this time, but purely for their own use. Whitworth's was the only firm that produced machine tools for resale. His shop produced lathes, planers, slotters, and drilling machines that had a reputation for quality, due to the precision of his methods.
Whitworth also turned out many new inventions. One notable achievement was the development of the claspnut used on the leadscrew of a lathe. Previously, lathes fitted with leadscrews featured a nut that held the screw in place. As the nut could not be disengaged, the lathe had to be wound back after each forward motion. Whitworth invented a divided nut that could be opened with a lever, thus saving lathe operators a great deal of time.
Whitworth was a great believer in accuracy. He often stated that a true plane and precise measurement were the two most important elements of constructive mechanics, and that the first of these elements was necessary for achieving the second. Accordingly, he was always interested in improving the quality of plane surfaces.
In 1830, he invented a method for producing a virtually perfect plane, through the hand-scraping of three trial surfaces, and engineer's blue, a dye that was rubbed into surfaces and polished off. Remaining spots of dye indicated high spots. Whitworth's flat surfaces were then used as the basis for developing other precision instruments. In 1856, he exhibited an instrument that could detect surface differences of one millionth of an inch.
Whitworth also built on Josepth Clement's work on the standardization of screws, inventing a system of thread standardization that was adopted as the national standard, and which still bears his name.
In 1853, the British government contracted him to build a plant for manufacturing rifles for the military. Whitworth was dissatisfied with the existing Enfield rifle, so he designed a new one (for his own description of this process, see his book Guns and Steel). Below is a drawing of Whitworth's Mechanical Rifle Rest:
Whitworth amassed a sizable fortune over the course of his career, and eventually
established a series of scholarships to advance mechanical engineering. He
was made a baronet for his many contributions to industry. He also received
many other honours in his life, including fellowship in the Royal Society,
the presidency of the Institution of Mechanical Engineering (twice), France's
Legion of Honour, and the rank of Commander of Brazil's Imperial Order of the
Rose.
Sources:
Bradley, Ian. A History of Machine Tools. Hemel Hempstead, Hertfordshire: Model and Allied Publications, 1972.
GSN Machine Tools Group. “Pioneers of the Machine Tool Industry: Joseph Whitworth.” http://www.gsn.uk.com/whitwirth.html"Joseph Whitworth." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Whitworth
Whitworth, Sir Joseph. Guns and Steel (excerpt from Chapter II). Excerpted by David Minshall (originally published in 1873).
http://www.lrml.org/directory/whitworth/whitworthgs.htm
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