James Nasmyth
James Nasmyth ( born August 19, 1808 in Edinburgh, † May 7, 1890 in London) was a Scottish engineer and inventor of the steam hammer.
Life and work
James Nasmyth was a son of the painter Alexander Nasmyth in Edinburgh and attended the art school and the university. He had himself appropriated as a hobby mechanic His technical skills. After attending the University, he went to London, filled with many plans and models of different machines and worked in 1828 for two years as a personal assistant to Henry Maudslay in whose company H. Maudslay, Son & Field. During this time, Nasmyth invented the mother milling machine, which has been built and marketed in 1829 by Maudslay.
In 1834 he established himself in Manchester and founded the company " Nasmyth, Gaskell and Co. " to manufacture machine tools, steam engines, steam boilers and tools for the iron and steel. Already in 1836 he built a horizontal planer whose reputation is also at its colloquial name " Nasmyth 's steam arm" recognizable. In his company he retired in 1856 back.
His most famous design is the one of him in 1839, designed steam hammer, in which the Hammerbär is driven directly from the piston rod of a steam engine. The reason for the design was that with the conventional forging process (driven by manual labor or engine drop hammers ) because of their size and load requirements are no longer malleable drive shaft for the SS Great Britain. Ideas for a steam driven power hammer had already been expressed in patents of James Watt from 1784 and William Deverell from the year 1806; also received in 1836 in France François Cavé a patent on the active principle. The construction of Nasymth, however, was only in 1842 applied for a patent. The first Nasmythsche steam hammer went further structural improvement by Nasmyth's chief engineer Robert Wilson in 1843 in operation. 1842 but had at the same time, the Frenchman François Bourdon, who had acquired in 1840 for accessing a steam hammer Nasmyth's sketch, get a patent on such a grant. Bourdon succeeded in the same year, ie 1842 to build his hammer at Le Creusot, to put into operation and also during a visit Nasymths in Le Creusot demonstrate this. The performance of the Bourdonschen hammer was so high that the twelve hours' work a monkey was done in four and a half minutes. The improvement works on Nasymthschen steam hammer 1843 the operating principle has been improved by the fact that you carried it out double-acting.
Nasymth also invented the steam pile driver, turned 1854 superheated steam in the puddling, were also new designs for rolling mills, drilling machines, milling machines, built the first filing machine for coarser work, a flexible shaft made from coiled steel wire and still further.
He was also involved in practical astronomy, developed and built its own telescopic type ( Nasmyth telescope), explored with the telescope, the physical nature of the moon, and wrote with Carpenter a book about the moon ( " The Moon Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite " ), that was published in 1874 and translated into several languages.
The lunar crater Nasmyth is named after him.
Works
- James Nasmyth, Samuel Smiles ( ed.): James Nasmyth engineer; an autobiography, John Murray, London, 1883
- The moon as a planet, world, and Trabant ("The Moon Considered as a planet, a world and a satelite "). Publisher Voss, Hamburg 1906 ( Nachdr d ed Leipzig 1876).
Swell
- Günter Spur: a transformation from the industrial world by machine tools, a cultural-historical examination of the production technology. Carl Hanser, Munich / Vienna, 1991, ISBN 3-446-16242-9.