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This year marks the 160th anniversary of the first IMechE presidency of Sir Joseph Whitworth – he was president once again 10 years later – who was not only an engineer but also an entrepreneur, inventor and philanthropist.
Born in 1803 in Stockport, Whitworth was apprenticed in Manchester to companies producing mill pumps and textile machinery. Moving to London at the age of 21, he joined the works of Henry Maudslay. After some years spent working for Holtzapffel and Company, he joined Joseph Clement in 1830.
Inventive spirit
During this period, Whitworth developed one of his main innovations, the true plane. Before this, planes had been produced by grinding, but he considered this process to be unreliable. The use of grinding powder could result in untrue planes and, if one of the planes was untrue, the error risked being spread between them. He developed his true planes through a process of scraping and matching.
Whitworth was able to produce these during his own time, but without additional resources he could not develop another of his achievements, the measuring machine. So in 1833, he set up his own tool-making business in Manchester, and within two years had produced a measuring machine that was designed to measure a yard (0.9m) length, capable of measuring with an accuracy of 0.0001in (0.0025mm). Soon after this, he produced a 0.000001in measuring machine, and exhibited it at the Great Exhibition of 1851.
At a meeting of the IMechE in 1859, he demonstrated that the machine would show the change in length caused by touching a one-inch carbon-steel bar.
Perhaps the invention that Whitworth is best known for is the standard gauge. A form of standard gauge had been in use in 1825, but in 1841 he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw threads that was used right up to the 1980s.
Before his standardisation, screws had been made in different sizes and shapes – and, if one was lost, it was often difficult to make a replacement. The advent of a standard system, and standard screw threads, allowed parts to be produced by different factories with the certainty that they would fit together.
As a demonstration, he gave the example of the production of 90 gunboat-engines for the Crimean war. These took only 90 days to produce, because the different manufacturers involved had all adopted Whitworth gauges. By 1858, his screw threads were being used universally, and in 1880 they were officially adopted by the Board of Trade.
Generous nature
Whitworth was also hugely important to the institution in setting up a scholarship fund bearing his name in 1868 to “promote engineering and mechanical industry”. This fund still exists, and awards money to students completing degrees in engineering.
He also supported the Mechanics’ Institute in Manchester – now known as UMIST – and helped to found Manchester School of Design.
Upon his death in 1887, Whitworth left much of his fortune to the people of Manchester, with his money part-funding the Whitworth Art Gallery and Christie Hospital.
In our new online virtual archive at archives.imeche.org/ you can view images from our Whitworth collections, including machine tool and product catalogues from Whitworth and Co, where you can see lathes, measuring machines and much more.
Did you know? Joseph Whitworth
Joseph Whitworth’s love of machinery began as a teenager when he became an apprentice at his uncle’s cotton mill in Derbyshire. He left to join a machine-making company in Manchester.
It was Henry Maudslay, whom he later worked for, who opened his eyes to theim-portance of standardisation in industry.