One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
Page 9
Archimedean screw, from a later edition of Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, first century B.C.
Diodorus was impressed with the simplicity and effectiveness of the water screw since he compared it to other ancient water-lifting devices such as complicated bucket conveyor belts and waterwheels. A common type of waterwheel was the tympanum, a large hollow wheel, ten to fifteen feet in diameter, divided into eight pie-shaped compartments. As the wheel turned, water flowed into the lowest compartment when it was submerged, and out when the compartment reached the top position. It has been suggested that the tympanum may have inspired Archimedes.23 Indeed, if the tympanum shape is stretched and rotated along its central axis, it produces a cylindrical helix. This three-dimensional extrapolation, although hardly obvious, would not have been difficult for a skilled mathematician. The presumed authorship of Archimedes is supported by another curious fact. The only detailed description of a water screw in all Greek and Latin literature, which is by Vitruvius, specifies a water screw with eight helical partitions—the precise number that would be produced if the water screw were inspired by the tympanum.24 Vitruvius was presumably describing the original water screw; later Roman engineers, realizing that there is no mechanical advantage to eight partitions—and considerable added cost—reduced their number to two or three.
Whether or not Archimedes was inspired by the tympanum, the water screw is yet another example of a mechanical invention that owes its existence to human imagination rather than technological evolution. And imagination is fickle. The ancient Chinese, for example, did not know the water screw; indeed, they didn’t know screws at all: the screw is the only major mechanical device that they did not independently invent.25 The Romans, on the other hand, knew about the screw when they invented the auger, yet they never realized that the same principle could solve a major drilling problem: the tendency of deep holes to become clogged with sawdust. Not until the early 1800s was the so-called spiral auger, whose helical shank cleared the sawdust as the bit turned, invented.
The water screw is not only a simple and ingenious machine, it is also, as far as we know, the first appearance in human history of the helix. The discovery of the screw represents a kind of miracle. Only a mathematical genius like Archimedes could have described the geometry of the helix in the first place, and only a mechanical genius like him could have conceived a practical application for this unusual shape. If he invented the water screw as a young man in Alexandria, and—as I like to think—later adapted the idea of the helix to the endless screw, then we must add a small but hardly trifling honor to his many distinguished achievements: Father of the Screw.
* * *
I. The Archimedean screw continues in use to this day. In modern screw-conveyors, the screw rotates inside the cylinder; in the ancient version, the entire cylinder rotated.
GLOSSARY OF TOOLS
London pattern screwdriver
Scotch pattern screwdriver
Undertaker’s screwdriver
Gent’ fancy screwdriver
Carpenter’s brace
Breast auger
Spiral bit auger
Cooper’s adze
Wooden carpenter’s brace with brass plates
Try square
Bevel
A-level
Spirit level
Maul
Combination case opener
Plane
Backsaw
Skew-back handsaw
Frame saw
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks, first, to David Shipley for asking the question. For help with the Greek quote, my appreciation to Prof. Ralph Rosen, chair of classical studies at the University of Pennsylvania. Robert A. Ruhloff was kind enough to send me information on wrought-iron spikes, including several interesting samples. Jamie Kendrick, Adam Barzilay, Maria Gonzalez, and Yi-Ting Liu provided capable research assistance. The Milton Historical Society supplied information on the redoubtable P. L. Robertson. The staff of the Fisher Fine Arts Library and the Van Pelt Library of the University of Pennsylvania were helpful, as always. I doubt that this small book would have seen the light of day without the encouragement of my editor, Nan Graham, and my agent, Carl Brandt, who both share my interest in tools and handy-work. Shirley Hallam, my wife, pointed me in the right direction, at the right time—as usual.
The Icehouse, Chestnut Hill, Pennsylvania
October 1999
WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI is the author of nine books, including Home, City Life, and the national bestseller A Clearing in the Distance, for which he won a Christopher Award and the J. Anthony Lukas Prize. He is a regular contributor to The Atlantic Monthly, The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, and The New York Review of Books. He teaches at the University of Pennsylvania.
ALSO BY WITOLD RYBCZYNSKI
Paper Heroes
Taming the Tiger
Home
The Most Beautiful House in the World
Waiting for the Weekend
Looking Around
A Place for Art
City Life
A Clearing in the Distance
We hope you enjoyed reading this Scribner eBook.
* * *
Join our mailing list and get updates on new releases, deals, bonus content and other great books from Scribner and Simon & Schuster.
CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP
or visit us online to sign up at
eBookNews.SimonandSchuster.com
NOTES
Chapter One: The Carpenter’s Toolbox
1. Edward Rosen, “The Invention of Eyeglasses: Part I,” Journal of the History of Medicine (January 1956): 34–35.
2. Ken Kern, The Owner-Built Home (Oakhurst, Calif.: Owner-Builder Publications, 1972), 78.
3. W. L. Goodman, The History of Woodworking Tools (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1964), 199–201.
4. R. A. Salaman, Dictionary of Tools: used in the woodworking and allied trades, c. 1700–1970 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1975), 299.
5. Lynn White Jr., “Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages,” Speculum 15 (April 1940): 153.
6. For a dissenting view, see A. G. Drachmann, “The Crank in Graeco-Roman Antiquity,” Changing Perspectives in the History of Science: Essays in Honour of Joseph Needham (London: Heinemann, 1973), 33–51.
7. Bertrand Gille, “Machines,” in Charles Joseph Singer et al., eds., A History of Technology: Vol. II, The Mediterranean Civilizations and the Middle Ages c. 700 B.C. to c. A.D. 1500 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 651.
8. Bertrand Gille, “The Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries in the Western World,” in Maurice Dumas, ed., A History of Technology & Invention: Vol. II, The First Stages of Mechanization, trans. Eileen B. Hennessy (New York: Crown Publishers, 1969), 23.
9. Graham Hollister-Short, “Cranks and Scholars,” History of Technology 17 (1995): 223–24.
10. Goodman, History of Woodworking Tools, 178.
11. Ibid., 9.
12. “Tools: Later development of hand tools: SCREW-BASED TOOLS: Screwdrivers and wrenches,” Britannica Online, December 1998.
Chapter Two: Turnscrews
1. Peter Nicholson, Mechanical Exercises: or, the elements and practice of Carpentry, Joinery, Bricklaying, Masonry, Slating, Plastering, Painting, Smithing, and Turning (London: J. Taylor, 1812), 353.
2. Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works (London: J. Moxon, 1693), A5–6.
3. The Greek Anthology, trans. W. R. Patton (London: William Heinemann, 1916), 405.
4. “Navigation,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, vol. 12 (Edinburgh: A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, 1797), plate 343. The reference is pointed out by Joseph E. Sandford, “Carpenters’ Tool Notes,” in Henry C. Mercer, Ancient Carpenters’ Tools: Together with Lumbermen’s, Joiners’ and Cabinet Makers’ Tools in Use in the Eighteenth Century (Doylestown, Pa.: Bucks County Historical Society, 1975), 311.
5. A Dictionary of American English: on historical principles, vol. 4
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944), 2045.
6. R. A. Salaman, Dictionary of Tools: used in the woodworking and allied trades, c. 1700–1970 (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1975), 450.
7. Ibid., 449.
8. A. J. Roubo, “L’Art du Menuisier en Meubles,” Description des Arts et Métiers, vol. 19 (Paris: Académie des Sciences, 1772), 944 (author’s translation).
9. Encyclopédie: ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, vol. 17 (Neuchastel: Samuel Faulche & Co., 1765), 484 (author’s translation).
10. Adolphe Hatzfeld and Arsène Darmesteter, Dictionnaire Général de la Langue Française: du commencement du XVIIe siècle jusqu’à nos jours, vol. 2 (Paris: Librairie Delagrave, 1932), 2171.
11. James M. Gaynor and Nancy L. Hagedorn, Tools: Working Wood in Eighteenth-Century America (Williamsburg, Va.: Colonial Williamsburg Foundation), 11.
12. Linda F. Dyke, Henry Chapman Mercer: An Annotated Chronology (Doylestown, Pa.: Bucks County Historical Society, 1989), 11.
13. Kenneth D. Roberts, Some 19th Century English Woodworking Tools: Edge & Joiner Tools and Bit Braces (Fitzwilliam, N.H.: Ken Roberts Publishing Co., 1980).
14. See Witold Rybczynski, “One Good Turn,” New York Times Magazine, April 18, 1999, 133.
Chapter Three: Lock, Stock, and Barrel
1. Lynn White Jr., “The Act of Invention: Causes, Contexts, Continuities, and Consequences,” Technology and Culture 3 (fall 1963): 486–500.
2. Martha Teach Gnudi, “Agostino Ramelli and Ambrose Bachot,” Technology and Culture 15, no. 4 (October 1974): 619.
3. The Various and Ingenious Machines of Agostino Ramelli (1588), trans. Martha Teach Gnudi (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 508.
4. Bert S. Hall, “A Revolving Bookcase by Agostino Ramelli,” Technology and Culture 11, no. 4 (July 1970): 397.
5. Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, trans. H. C. Hoover and L. H. Hoover (New York: Dover Publications, 1950), 364.
6. Christoph Graf zu Waldburg Wolfegg, Venus and Mars: The World of the Medieval Housebook (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1998), 8.
7. Hugh B. C. Pollard, Pollard’s History of Firearms, Claude Blair, ed. (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 29.
8. John Keegan, A History of Warfare (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993), 329.
9. Fernand Braudel, The Structures of Everyday Life: Vol. I, The Limits of the Possible, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1981), 392.
10. Pollard, Pollard’s History of Firearms, 55.
11. Ibid., 35.
12. Ibid., 18.
13. Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works (London: J. Moxon, 1693), 33–34.
14. Charles John Ffoulkes, The Armourer and His Craft: From the XIth to the XVIth Century (New York: Benjamin Blom, 1967), 55.
15. Claude Blair, European Armour: circa 1066 to circa 1700 (London: B. T. Batsford Ltd., 1958), 162.
16. Ffoulkes, Armourer and His Craft, 24.
17. Ibid., plate V.
Chapter Four: The Biggest Little Invention
1. Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, trans. H. C. Hoover and L. H. Hoover (New York: Dover Publications, 1950), 364.
2. G. H. Baillie, C. Clutton, and C. A. Ilbert, Britten’s Old Clocks and Watches and Their Makers (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1956), 14.
3. Ibid., 64.
4. Joseph Chamberlain, “Manufacture of Iron Wood Screws,” in British Association for the Advancement of Science, Committee on Local Industries, The Resources, Products, and Industrial History of Birmingham and the Midland Hardware District (London: R. Hardwicke, 1866), 605–6.
5. Henry C. Mercer, Ancient Carpenters’ Tools: Together with Lumbermen’s, Joiners’ and Cabinet Makers’ Tools in Use in the Eighteenth Century (Doylestown, Pa.: Bucks County Historical Society, 1975), 259.
6. Quoted by H. W. Dickinson, “Origin and Manufacture of Wood Screws,” Transactions of the Newcomen Society 22 (1941–42): 80.
7. Ibid., 81.
8. Ibid., 89.
9. Ken Lamb, P.L.: Inventor of the Robertson Screw (Milton, Ont.: Milton Historical Society, 1998), 35.
10. Ibid., 16.
11. Henry F. Phillips and Thomas M. Fitzpatrick, “Screw,” U.S. patent number 2,046,839, July 7, 1936.
12. American Screw Company to Henry F. Phillips, March 27, 1933.
13. Mead Gliders, Chicago, to American Screw Company, April 26, 1938.
14. Wentling Woodcrafters, Camden, N.J., to American Screw Company, June 15, 1938.
15. “The Phillips Screw Company” (unpublished paper, Phillips Screw Company, Wakefield, Mass.).
16. Consumer Reports 60, no. 11 (November 1995): 695.
Chapter Five: Delicate Adjustments
1. L. T. C. Rolt, A Short History of Machine Tools (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1965), 59.
2. Robert S. Woodbury, Studies in the History of Machine Tools (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1972), 20–21.
3. Ibid., 49.
4. Christoph Graf zu Waldburg Wolfegg, Venus and Mars: The World of the Medieval Housebook (Munich: Prestel-Verlag, 1998), 88.
5. Jacques Besson, Theatrum Machinarum (Lyon: 1578), plate IX.
6. Charles Plumier, L’art de tourner (Lyon: 1701).
7. Maurice Daumas and André Garanger, “Industrial Mechanization,” in A History of Technology & Invention, Maurice Daumas, ed., trans. Eileen B. Hennessy (New York: Crown Publishers, 1969), 271.
8. James Nasmyth, James Nasmyth, Engineer: An Autobiography (London: John Murray, 1885), 136.
9. Ibid., 144.
10. Ibid., 128.
11. L. T. C. Rolt, Great Engineers (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1962), 105.
12. Samuel Smiles, Industrial Biography: Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864), 282.
Chapter Six: Mechanical Bent
1. Samuel Smiles, Industrial Biography: Iron-Workers and Tool-Makers (Boston: Ticknor & Fields, 1864), 337.
2. Ibid., 223.
3. Ibid., 312.
4. Ibid., 204 (author’s translation).
5. W. L. Goodman, The History of Woodworking Tools (London: G. Bell & Sons, 1964), 105.
6. Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1960), 184.
7. A. G. Drachmann, “Ancient Oil Mills and Presses,” Kgl. Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Archaeologisk-kunsthistoriske Meddelelser 1, no.1 (1932): 73.
8. Ibid., 76.
9. Bertrand Gille, “Machines,” in A History of Technology, vol. 2, Charles Joseph Singer et al., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 631–32.
10. John James Hall, “The Evolution of the Screw: Its Theory and Practical Application,” Horological Journal, July 1929, 269–70.
11. Quoted in John W. Humphrey et al., Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1998), 56.
12. A. G. Drachmann, “Heron’s Screwcutter,” Journal of Hellenic Studies 56 (1936): 72–77.
13. Quoted in Humphrey et al., Greek and Roman Technology, 56.
14. Quoted in Hall, “Evolution of the Screw: Its Theory and Practical Application,” Horological Journal, August 1929: 285.
15. Vitruvius, Ten Books, 285.
16. Henry C. Mercer, Ancient Carpenters’ Tools: Together with Lumbermen’s, Joiners’ and Cabinet Makers’ Tools in Use in the Eighteenth Century (Doylestown, Pa.: Bucks County Historical Society, 1975), 273.
Chapter Seven: Father of the Screw
1. Derek J. de Solla Price, “Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera Mechanism—a Calendar Computer from ca. 80 B.C.,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society 64, pt. 7 (November 1974): 51.
2. Derek J. de Solla Price, “Clockwork Before the Clock,” Horological Journal (December 1955): 810–14.
3. Derek J. de Solla Price, “An Ancient Greek Computer,” Scientific American, June 1959, 60–67.
4. Ibid., 66.
5. Ibid., 67.
6. Qu
oted in John W. Humphrey et al., Greek and Roman Technology: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 1998), 57–58.
7. Claudius Claudianus, Shorter Poems 51, in Humphrey et al., Greek and Roman Technology, 58.
8. Quoted in The Works of Archimedes, T. L. Heath, ed. (New York: Dover Publications, 1953), xviii.
9. Vitruvius, The Ten Books on Architecture, trans. Morris Hicky Morgan (New York: Dover Publications, 1960), 254.
10. Quoted in E. J. Dijksterhuis, Archimedes, trans. C. Dikshoorn (Copenhagen: Ejnar Munksgaard, 1956), 13.
11. New York Times, November 11, 1973.
12. Quoted in D. L. Simms, “Archimedes’ Weapons of War and Leonardo,” British Journal of the History of Science 21 (1988): 196.
13. The Times, May 15, 1981.
14. Quoted in A. G. Drachmann, “How Archimedes Expected to Move the Earth,” Centaurus 5, no. 3–4 (1958): 278.
15. Quoted in Dijksterhuis, Archimedes, 15.
16. Drachmann, “How Archimedes Expected to Move the Earth,” 280–81.
17. R. J. Forbes, “Hydraulic Engineering and Sanitation,” A History of Technology, vol. 2, Charles Joseph Singer et al., eds. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), 677; A. G. Drachmann, The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1963), 204.