File:Middletown milling machine 1818--001.png

Summary

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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simeon_North" class="extiw" title="w:Simeon North">Simeon North</a>. It has often been described as "the first milling machine", as has <a href="//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eli_Whitney_milling_machine_1818--001.png" title="File:Eli Whitney milling machine 1818--001.png">another contemporary machine long credited to Eli Whitney and dated circa 1818</a>, 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 <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/machine_element" class="extiw" title="w:machine element">machine elements</a> that characterizes <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/machine_tool" class="extiw" title="w:machine tool">machine tool</a> innovation. Such recombining would produce the turret lathe some 25 years later.

Licensing

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