<P> Henry Maudslay, who trained a school of machine tool makers early in the 19th century, was a mechanic with superior ability who had been employed at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich . He worked as an apprentice in the Royal Gun Foundry of Jan Verbruggen . In 1774 Jan Verbruggen had installed a horizontal boring machine in Woolwich which was the first industrial size Lathe in the UK . Maudslay was hired away by Joseph Bramah for the production of high - security metal locks that required precision craftsmanship . Bramah patented a lathe that had similarities to the slide rest lathe . Maudslay perfected the slide rest lathe, which could cut machine screws of different thread pitches by using changeable gears between the spindle and the lead screw . Before its invention screws could not be cut to any precision using various earlier lathe designs, some of which copied from a template . The slide rest lathe was called one of history's most important inventions . Although it was not entirely Maudslay's idea, he was the first person to build a functional lathe using a combination of known innovations of the lead screw, slide rest and change gears . </P> <P> Maudslay left Bramah's employment and set up his own shop . He was engaged to build the machinery for making ships' pulley blocks for the Royal Navy in the Portsmouth Block Mills . These machines were all - metal and were the first machines for mass production and making components with a degree of interchangeability . The lessons Maudslay learned about the need for stability and precision he adapted to the development of machine tools, and in his workshops he trained a generation of men to build on his work, such as Richard Roberts, Joseph Clement and Joseph Whitworth . </P> <P> James Fox of Derby had a healthy export trade in machine tools for the first third of the century, as did Matthew Murray of Leeds . Roberts was a maker of high - quality machine tools and a pioneer of the use of jigs and gauges for precision workshop measurement . </P> <P> The impact of machine tools during the Industrial Revolution was not that great because other than firearms, threaded fasteners and a few other industries there were few mass - produced metal parts . The techniques to make mass - produced metal parts made with sufficient precision to be interchangeable is largely attributed to a program of the U.S. Department of War which perfected interchangeable parts for firearms in the early 19th century . </P>

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