Nasmyth Steam Hammer

1839 · Steam Hammer · Work 101 of 1,871

Nasmyth Steam Hammer, 1839, Steam Hammer

A Nasmyth steam hammer poised above the anvil, tup suspended between heavy inverted-U frames, glowing forging held in long tongs beneath, Glasgow forge shop around it.

What it was used for
The steam hammer stood in forges working pieces too large for the tilt hammer: crankshafts, ship shafts, anchors, tyres. It began as an order. In 1839 Francis Humphrys, engineer to the Great Western Steamship Company, needed a paddle shaft for the Great Britain that no English forge could supply. Nasmyth drew the answer into his Scheme Book on 24 November 1839; by his own account the whole contrivance stood before him little more than half an hour after Humphrys's letter arrived. The shaft was never needed: the owners changed the ship to screw propulsion, and Humphrys died soon after, by Nasmyth's account. The first working hammer was built not at Patricroft but at Schneider's works at Le Creusot. Nasmyth later wrote that his sketches had been copied there; Bourdon denied it. Nasmyth patented only in June 1842, after seeing the hammer at work in France.
What was new
Not the first power hammer, but the first whose blow could be governed while the work was under it: stroke and force hung on the steam valve, not on the height of the frame, and a thick workpiece did not shorten the blow. Priority is disputed. François Bourdon built one at Le Creusot before 1842, Nasmyth patented afterwards, and the quarrel broke into the open in 1843. Even the patented hammer was hand-worked; the self-acting gear that turned it into a production tool is credited to Robert Wilson, set on the problem by Nasmyth's partner Holbrook Gaskell and carried out by Thomas Crewdson; it was patented in 1847. As early as 1865 his contemporary Thomas Smith Rowlandson held the hammer as originally constructed to be practically unworkable and in danger of being abandoned.

Connections

Every connection names its kind. “Forerunner” on its own would be a claim.

  1. EncounteredCrystal Palace1851Nasmyth's steam hammer was one of the exhibits at the Great Exhibition, which opened on 1 May 1851 in the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park and ran until October. A photograph by Claude-Marie Ferrier from the same year shows it in the second volume of the official Reports by the Juries.Source: Royal Collection Trust, RCIN 2800024: The Great Exhibition, 1851 - Steam Hammer by Nasmyth (Claude-Marie Ferrier, 1851) · Victoria and Albert Museum: The foundation of the V&A's Collections - the Great Exhibition of 1851

Further reading