Tools & manufacturing · c. 1800

Screw-cutting lathe

An all-metal lathe with a lead screw cuts accurate, repeatable threads.

Henry Maudslay built an all-iron screw-cutting lathe with a slide rest around 1800 in London. Identical threads and flat surfaces became the foundation of the machine tool industry.

See it in the living tree Wikipedia

Arcs above join it to what it stood on, arcs below to what it led to. The bar places this stretch on the tree's whole timeline.

What it built on 3

Coke-fired iron smelting 1709
Screw 250 BCE
Lathe 1300 BCE

What it led to 4

Portsmouth Block Mills 1803
Milling machine 1818
Standard screw thread 1841
Micrometer caliper 1848

Related measurements

The dashed line marks when it first worked.

Patents awarded in England, 1700-1851 Latest: 455 patents per year (1851) Source: Our World in Data