"In 1854...ltookout a patent for puddling iron by means of steam."
James Nasmyth
In the early days of the Industrial Revolution, large pieces of metal were made by forging multiple small segments then welding them together into a finished product. Metalworking hammers of the day were capable of forging small items efficiently, but when a large item was placed in them, they had little room to maneuver and therefore little force.
This fact became painfully obvious when the Great Western Steamship Company began to build the SS Great Britain. The engineer in charge found it impossible to locate a hammer capable of producing the mammoth paddle wheels that were to propel the ship. Edinburgh-born engineer James Nasmyth (1808-1890) heard about the problem and sketched out a design for a large steam-powered hammer that. would be capable of producing just such a piece of equipment. Nasmyth's hammer consisted of a piston attached to a hammer head. By admitting steam to the piston, the hammer head was raised to a certain height and then released, falling with tremendous force before being rapidly raised again. Unfortunately for the steam hammer and the engineer, the design of the Great Britain was changed from a paddle-wheel design to that of screw drive, rendering redundant the production of the hammer.
Nasmyth did not attempt to manufacture or even patent his hammer until he visited the Le Creusot ironworks in France where, to his surprise, he found his invention in action. He quickly patented his design back home in England and then set about production. His hammer proved so well designed and easy to control that it reduced production costs of forged iron by as much as 50 percent and was also so adaptable that it could be used to forge very large items or something as small as a nail.
