The Greatest Mechanical invention

Probably the steam engines as with it we had the start of the industrial revolution bringing on more discoveries including the tractor.

Previous to the tractor we had plowing engines.

Howver a good post Grey as we all have our own interpretation of what is the best invention, we will leave it up to Ady to re-invent the wheel and to Springbok to tell us they will all be on display at the next Bristol show

It has to be the clock

It regulated the working day, made accurate navigation possible and thus opened up trade routes. It syncronised the railways. The list goes on had I more time to add to it.

How about a lathe. A machine that can repair itself. Without it you could not make a tractor.

The lathe, as it enabled all the above things to happen.

Martin.

EDIT: Paul. you beat me to it

Edited By blowlamp on 10/10/2012 09:26:05

Internal combustion engine.

The WHEEL (and its axle). NO CONTEST. (Shouting intended!)

An excellent thread, Gray

I will sponsor Archimedes' Screw

Originally devised as a means for lifting water, it is now being used "in reverse" as the Turbine for small scale Electricity Generation.

MichaelG.

The lathe gets my vote, it is the mother of all machine tools and can be powered by a man,water, steam or electricity or any other power source you can think of.

Mike

Hand tools as none of the above would have been possible without them.

Boiler

Sorry Boiler Bri but hand tools are not mechanical.

Hi Eric,

Hand tools may not be part of a machine, but they can be described as mechanical,

Quote - Dictionary.com:

"6. pertaining to the design, use, understanding, etc., of tools and machinery: the mechanical trades; mechanical ability."

There is a great little book about the importance and development of the screwdriver and screw - I forget it's title just now but will look it out. The screw in all it's forms is generally regarded as a mechanical device. Perhaps the most important mechanical device is the screw generating machine to generate the first accurate screw thread which led to easy assembly and disassambly of other mechanical devices and led to the concept of interchangeability and hence volume production methods.  The screw also allowed the development of accurate end delicate instruments and clocks (previously rather crude blacksmith made devices to regulate the religious day) which allowed finer and finer engineering to be undertaken.

Best regards

Terry

Found it! the book is called

One Good Turn: a Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw, by Witold Rybczynski

Edited By Terryd on 10/10/2012 11:07:58

Terry,

Would you therefore agree regarding Archimedes' Screw ?

Everything you mention lies between the two extremes that I highlighted.

MichaelG.

I suppose it's all chicken and egg really, but my vote for a machine would be the lathe, in one form or other, that includes such things as the potters wheel, and the lathe type device used to turn round stone collums of ancient buildings. Ian S C

we will leave it up to Ady to re-invent the wheel

----

My first thoughts were canned food, antibiotics and clean water....

most valuable mechanical invention made to date

What made the steam engine possible?

What made large scale metal production possible?

The blast furnace, the foundry?

But industry A feeds industry B which feeds industry C which makes improvements for Industry A and so on.

Synergy. The sum of the parts being greater than the whole

I would go with the steam engine, which was originally rubbish but then someone put tubes into it and its efficiency was massively increased

The Steam engine was the first time a machine could do real useful work anywhere it was needed

This resulted in an explosion of output, the industrial revolution

Hi all

Joseph Whitworth's inspired invention of the method of producing a true flat surface plate using three plates scraped to all fit together. Two plates could be flat or spherical, three plates could only be flat.

He achieved accuracies of a millionth of an inch in the1840's

This invention allowed the production of precision measuring instruments and machine tools from which all else in precision engineering stemmed.

Jim

A steam engine meant you could power an overhead drive to make any machine you want to realise its full potential

So a place with 5 painstakingly made hand fettled lathes and planers could suddenly make 5 a month instead of 1 and do this 24/7

Output soared exponentially, the poles melted and all the polar bears drowned

"Hand tools may not be part of a machine, but they can be described as mechanical"

In the context of the question "mechanical" refers to machinery.

As for the suggestions of the lathe, try turning without a clock, ie rpm and ft/min plus the time you take.

It's definately the clock

Jim,

A couple of publications that I think you would enjoy:

1. ON AN UNIFORM SYSTEM OF SCREW THREADS,
   Communicated to the Institution of Civil Engineers, A.D. 1841
2. The Whitworth Measuring Machine
   Goodeve and Shelley, 1877

Would go for the steam engine, but without the blast furnace there was no quality steel for the boiler, without the lathe the cylinders could not be bored. Without Iron ore and coal in the ground the blast furnace was pointless.....without power the the lathe would not turn.....

To me the industrial revolution may not be a machine in itself, but as a whole it happened because of all the above mentioned factors and the world changed for ever.........for good or bad......

Waiting to be shot down........

Trev

The crank shaft, without which your wonderful reciprocating engines would have limited use and the industrial revolution may not have happened.

Nigel