Lathe

Lore & Background

The lathe is an ancient tool, with the earliest evidence being a depiction in the tomb of Petosiris from 4th century BC Egypt. There is tenuous evidence for a turned artifact at a Mycenaean Greek site from the 13th or 14th century BC. Clear evidence of turned artifacts exists from the 6th century BC, including fragments of a wooden bowl in an Etruscan tomb in Northern Italy and two flat wooden dishes from modern Turkey. During the Warring States period in China, around 400 BC, the ancient Chinese used rotary lathes to sharpen tools and weapons on an industrial scale. The first known painting showing a lathe dates to the 4th century BC in ancient Egypt. Pliny later describes the use of a lathe for turning soft stone in his Natural History.

Reader's Guide

Precision metal-cutting lathes were developed organically during the lead up to the Industrial Revolution, with many inventors contributing. They were critical to the manufacture of mechanical inventions of that period. There are many claims for the person who invented the precision lathe, but one professor notes competing claims and cautions against the 'heroic inventor' treatment, stating that precision is a child of many parents and evolved steadily over three centuries. Early examples include a version with a mechanical cutting tool-supporting carriage and gears by Russian engineer Andrey Nartov in 1718 and another with a slide-rest shown in a 1717 edition of the French Encyclopédie. The slide-rest was a particularly important development because it constrains the motion of the cutting tool to generate accurate cylindrical or conical surfaces. By the 1770s, precision lathes became practical and well-known. A slide-rest is clearly shown in a 1772 edition of the Encyclopédie, and a horse-powered cannon boring lathe was installed in the Royal Arsenal in Woolwich, England by Jan Verbruggen. Henry Maudslay, inventor of many subsequent improvements, worked as an apprentice in Verbruggen's workshop. During the Industrial Revolution, mechanized power from water wheels or steam engines was transmitted via line shafting. Between the late 19th and mid-20th centuries, individual electric motors replaced line shafting. Beginning in the 1950s, servomechanisms were applied via numerical control, leading to computerized numerical control (CNC). Today manually controlled and CNC lathes coexist.

Did You Know?

• The earliest evidence of a lathe is a depiction in the tomb of Petosiris, dating back to 4th century BC Egypt.
• During the Warring States period in China, around 400 BC, rotary lathes were used to sharpen tools and weapons on an industrial scale.
• The slide-rest, a key development for precision, is shown in a 1717 edition of the French Encyclopédie.
• Henry Maudslay, inventor of many subsequent improvements to the lathe, worked as an apprentice in Jan Verbruggen's workshop in Woolwich.