Samuel Bentham
Samuel Bentham (1757-1831) was an engineer and inventor
He left school he became a naval apprentice at Woolwich, UK. Here it was found that his tastes inclined him towards the administrative and constructional work of the navy.
In 1780, as a consequence of these abilities he was sent by the First Lord of the Admiralty to visit various ports and dockyards in Northern Europe. In Russia he was particularly well received and while he was there he took charge of Prince Potemkin's factories which, at that time, were being very badly mismanaged. While he was in Russia he built and equipped a flotilla of ships and distinguished himself in a victorious naval battle with the Turks for, which special guns that he had built and mounted in the ships, shells were fired for the first time in naval warfare.
As there were very few skilled workmen in Russia at that time Bentham started working on the problem of "transferring skill" by the means of machines. He thought that it should be possible to built machines which worked by unskilled labour, could produce the same results as skilled workmen.
So while Bramah and Maudslay were at work in London on their metal-working machines for making locks, Bentham in Russia, was working along very similar lines as applied to wood-working machines.
In 1791 he returned to England and took out his first patent for wood-working machines. As a result of his recommendations to the Admiralty regarding the savings his machines (sawing, planing and block-making machines) could make in the dockyards, he was created Inspector General of Naval Works and given authority to put his recommendations into effect.
In 1793 Bentham took out another patent, which has been called "one of the most remarkable patents ever issued by the British Patents Office", for it set forth the whole scheme of woodworking machinery for making blocks.
At that time pulley blocks formed one of the most important items of naval supplies. A single frigate required as many as 1,500 of them and the Admiralty were purchasing about 100.000 per year. Bentham erected a factory in Portsmouth Dockyard for the manufacture of blocks by his method, but before he began to build the machines he met Marc Isambard Brunel.
Brunel showed his drawings to Bentham who immediately recognised them as being superior to his own. He recommended their adoption to the Admiralty with the result that Brunel was commissioned to build and install them.
Some of Bentham's machines were retained, but only for the roughing-out operations, all the finishing being done on Brunel's more intricate machines.
It was when the work of building his machines began that Brunel, who was a clever and original designer but no mechanic, realised his need for someone capable of building them.
Hearing of Brunel's difficulty, a friend of his a M. de Bacquancourt, introduced him to a young engineer named Henry Maudslay who was eventually commissioned to carry out the whole contract. The total number of machines was 44 and at that time constituted one of the most ingenious and complete collections of tools ever invented for making articles in wood.
By the aid of this machinery 10 unskilled men did the work of 110 skilled workmen and in so doing saved the country enormous sums of money.
The block-making machines were installed at the Naval Dockyards at Portsmouth and later Chatham, as well as a number of Naval dockyards overseas. Some of the machines were still in regular use during the 1940's
As well as the block-making machines, Brunel also mechanised the wood-sawing mills at the Dockyard, and developed a series of machines for mechanised boot-making for the army.
In 1800 he proposed the use of a steam engine to drive a bucket dredger. Leter it was built and was put in to use in April 1802. He then approved the more powerful engine by Richard Trevithick but the explosion at Greenwich in 1803 led to the cancellation of the order. [1]
1831 April 30th. Died. Aged 76.[2]