History of the Gear-Cutting Machine by Robert S.

Woodbury; History of the Grinding

Machine by Robert S. Woodbury
Review by: Edwin A. Battison
Isis, Vol. 51, No. 4 (Dec., 1960), pp. 582-583
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/228627 .
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582
stone from the quarrieson Lake Maggiore and
the Church insisted on floating the stone
through the city walls and the merchants de-
manded the same privileges, the inventive
genius of the Milanese was aroused. The mod-
ern canal lock came into existence as the result
of a chain of fortuitous circumstances, and
few of them had anything to do with engi-
neering.
So convinced is the author that canal
locks originated in Italy with Bertola
that he does not even suggest that Neth-
erlanders might have used them earlier.
In this he follows the American engineer-
historian, William Barclay Parsons, to
whose extensive researches he acknowl-
edges his indebtedness. In his praise of
Leonardo's hydraulic engineering the au-
thor is perhaps a bit fulsome: "Never
before had there been a man so skilled
in the understanding of the flow of water,
and no one like him ever came after-
ward."
The average non-technical reader, and
even many historians, will be intrigued
by this book, especially by the earlier
chapters. It is unique in its field and
should find wide acceptance. Few books
dealing with any phase of engineering
history are as stimulating. The twenty-
six illustrations include 6 portraits and
five maps. The Select Bibliography is
adequate.
RICHARD S. KIRBY
Charlotte, N. C.
ROBERT S. WOODBURY: History of the
Gear-CuttingMachine. A historical study
in geometry and machines with a Fore-
word by Abbott Payson Usher. (Tech-
nology Monographs-Historical Series,
I.) iv + 135 pp., figs., illus., bibl. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: The Technology Press,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
1958. $3.00
ROBERT S. WOODBURY: History of the
Grinding Machine. A historical study in
tools and precision production. 191 pp.,
figs., illus., bibl. (Technology Mono-
graphs - Historical Series, 2.) Cam-
bridge, Mass.: The Technology Press,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
1959. $3.00
The "History of the Gear-Cutting Ma-
chine" is the first published paper in a
series planned to result, by late 1961, in
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All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
BOOK REVIEWS
a two volume "History of Metal-Cutting
Machine Tools." This will be the first
comprehensive work in the field in nearly
fifty years, the first since Roe's "English
and American Tool Builders." To judge
from those papers now in print, Profes-
sor Woodbury's work will be quite dif-
ferent and far more detailed than any
preceding work, with the exception of
occasional papers scattered through vari-
ous periodicals. To a large extent the
material appearing in periodical form
over many years forms the basis of the
"History of the Gear-Cutting Machine,"
if we include the references pointed out
in these articles. This is not to imply
that Woodbury's work presents nothing
new; here, with the material assembled
in an orderly manner, it is possible to get
far the broadest and best view of the field
ever presented. Through this study we
can see that neither theory nor practice
was by itself adequate to the needs of
developing industry but that by a fusion
of the two to form an engineering ap-
proach the mathematical problems were
soon expressed in productive machinery.
The theory and mathematics of gearing
and of tooth forms as well as machines
based on all the known means of gear
tooth production are treated; the simple
roughing-out machines of the early clock-
makers through those machines whose
parts are so disposed that they actual-
ly generate complex mathematical tooth
forms on the work. Due to the extent
of the field the picture has necessarily
been painted in bold strokes. To quote
the author: "To try to do more would
be to bog down in a quagmire of anti-
quarian trivia." For those who will want
to delve more deeply there are extensive
footnotes plus over three pages of bibli-
ography. Although represented only as
part of a scholarly foundation for his
forthcoming "History of Tools," the work
will afford the engineer as well as the
historian much of interest. This concise
view of what has been accomplished in
the past lends useful perspective to cur-
rent practice and is a revealing outline
of the recognized possibilities in the field.
The reader with a background in the
machine tool field will recognize that
where the book deviates from reporting
into interpretation an element of confu-
sion and weakness enters. It will be ap-
 BOOK REVIEWS
parent to all that the proofreader might
have removed many little errors of the
sort that creep into all works of this na-
ture. Nothing, however, can detract from
the great value and utility of the volumi-
nous references and the numerous illus-
trations.
The "History of the Grinding Ma-
chine" by the same author is physically
very similar, except that it is larger, and
unfortunately the proofreading was no
more carefully done. The paper opens
with an introduction dealing with the use
of abrasives in the neolithic period and
outlining the justifications which have
led to the development of modern ma-
chines. Following this orientation is a
chapter, "Early Mechanization of Grind-
ing," which depends largely on the work
of Schroeder and brings his important
work (in German) some of the attention
it deserves. No clear differentiation is
made between those early machines with
some degree of ability to reproduce their
inbuilt geometry on the work and those
in which the abrasive tool merely repro-
duces a conjugate shape in the work.
With the nineteenth-century work taken
up in the succeeding chapter we see the
beginning of machinery adapted to in-
dustrial, as distinguished from craft, use.
Some of the machines presented in this
chapter, particularly the American ma-
chines of Wheaton and Darling, are both
fresh and of considerable importance.
The drawing of Wheaton's machine re-
veals a machine with traveling work
carriage and a wheel adjustable to ac-
commodate wheel wear and various di-
ameters of work on the plan that even-
tually became standard and is in wide
use today. The value lies more in Whea-
ton's references to an earlier similar ma-
chine than to his own "improvements"
which represent a groping for extend-
ed versatility rather than the practical
achievement of it. To say that this ma-
chine contains the basic principle of the
Universal grinding machine (presumably
as we know it from the work of Joseph
R. Brown) seems to be straining rather
hard to establish either priority or con-
tinuity, for the all important swiveling
wheel stand is not present. Reference is
made to another page for a description
of the universal grinder but no clear defi-
nition is found. Both illustrations and
This content downloaded from 62.122.78.49 on Sun, 15 Jun 2014 06:01:41 AM
All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
583
text covering the formative period would
be far more clear and precise if they were
accompanied by schematic drawings of
the machines under discussion as has
been so successfully done with the topic
of centerless grinding toward the end of
the paper. It seems a glaring omission
not to take at least passing notice of the
extensive use of grinding machines by
Gay, Silver & Co. in the production of
shafting. Several of these machines were
employed using large natural grindstones
with such success that they were only
displaced by the advent of cold rolled
shafting, They constitute what is prob-
ably the clearest record of the long
sustained commercial use of machine
grinding without dependence on artificial
wheels.
As might be expected, the precision
machines of Moseley, Furbush and J. R.
Brown appear after the introduction of
the artificial wheel and progress from
that time on is continuous and clear.
From light machines using small wheels
through the development of abrasives,
bonds, high production machines and the
many forms of specialized machines the
author leads us to a review of the scien-
tific work which has contributed so much
to both machine and abrasive develop-
ment. Extensive footnotes and biblio-
graphic references are included as with
the "History of the Gear-Cutting Ma-
chine." Both papers are very well and
completely indexed, greatly extending
their utility. The reader who compares
these papers with any work preceding
them will be very favorably impressed
with the value of Professor Woodbury's
work for its detail, the wealth of fresh
material presented and the great avenues
for more detailed exploration opened up
by the reference material.
EDWIN A. BATTISON
Smithsonian Institution
GUSTAVE LEFEBVRE: Essai sur la medi-
cine 6gyptienne de l'epoque pharaonique.
Ouvrage publie avec le concours du Cen-
tre National de la Recherche Scientifique.
viii + 212 pp., plates. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1956. 1,200 fr.
This book, modestly described as an
Essai (it will be abbreviated thus in this
review), was composed mainly from the