Image: Middletown milling machine 1818--001

Description: Line drawing of a milling machine in use in a firearms factory in Middletown, Connecticut, USA, by 1818. It was described by E.G. Parkhurst, who had seen it in 1851 and gathered information about it then from Robert Johnson, who dated it to 1818. Another of the people associated with its development is Simeon North. It has often been described as "the first milling machine", as has another contemporary machine long credited to Eli Whitney and dated circa 1818, although today's scholarship in the history of technology makes clear that milling practice and equipment evolved from rotary filing gradually enough, and among enough builders, that it cannot be said with accuracy that the builders of this machine "invented" the milling machine. One of the interesting aspects of this machine is its striking similarity (through modern eyes) to a turret lathe headstock and front slide, minus the rest of the lathe. These echoes underscore the mixing and matching of machine elements that characterizes machine tool innovation. Such recombining would produce the turret lathe some 25 years later.
Title: Middletown milling machine 1818--001
Credit: Original unknown. Known to have been published and borrowed for republishing repeatedly at least by 1906 and probably before. Appeared in the American Machinist journal and several books.
Author: Unknown
Permission: PD-US
Usage Terms: Public domain
License: Public domain
Attribution Required?: No