This is probably a question for both people who know their materials and also those who have an interest in history.

We know that in earlier times, pre-industrial, that lathes did exist and the evidence is in the items made with them, particularly wood and soft stones, maybe even some bronze, copper, silver and gold items too. Ever since you've needed a round wheel or pottery you can almost assume they knew what a lathe could do. 

What is thin on the ground though is the evidence for the machines themselves or perhaps even the interest in them. I wonder, such as materials which became relatively common in the industrial age, such as cast iron and fine iron, were once considered uncommon, not because the iron wasn't there but the equipment to work it was rare, due to it's higher melting temperature.

Before lathes could be driven by a watermill or steam plant, the instrument itself was almost considered a two person machine, one to carve and the other to drive. Some mills could be driven by animals so maybe a similar arrangement was made with a beast of burden. 

I wonder, in a modern sense, we worry about things such as rigidity of the machine, didn't they atleast eventually, come to the same conclusion, that a good lathe needed a solid rigid base from a material that wasn't uncommon and could be worked, why was stone never considered as a material for a rigid base? (for me at least, it ticks all of those boxes.)

So it took a long time to get there but there are these considerations before the question is immediately dismissed as odd and irrelevant. It could create some interesting discussion!

Michael W

Edited By Michael Walters on 02/08/2016 13:46:44

Well "my life!" As some might say, it's certainly given me alot to look at, theres something quite enchanting about watching the bow lathe turner work on the king piece in marrakeck, it's so simple yet the results are marvelous, his chisel certainly looked mighty keen though!

The reciprocal motion isn't something i considered, and my entire mindset about lathes revolved entirely around the continuous motion concept, the evidence that Romans had considered this and especially the ever famed leonardo had drawn a treadle lathe is simply startling,

it's pretty much the simplest form of a modern lathe i can imagine, meaning, if i had to make a lathe out of what i could find in my garage, that's what i'd be going for. One larger foot pedaled wheel turning a smaller one mounted on a bench between two centres and a rest.

Having said that, it did note on the history website provided by Martin Kyte that it would turn far too slowly for turning work. In an attempt to justify leonardo's drawing, I would say knowing that he had a penchant for coming up with unique designs (that he could sell to provide a living for himself) i would argue he wouldn't be naive enough to not realize that, he never intended for it to be a simple turning machine.

I once picked up an old victorian book on "ornamental" turning in my town bookshop, the illustrations showed spiralled columns turned from ivory, and it listed an extensive list of devices for accurately creating very fine pitch spirals, it shows how during this age the limits of turning were pushed.

Now, leonardo living several hundred years earlier, would've been in a position to market a special machine designed to turn much slower so that intricate groves could be more closely controlled than a faster turning machine. I could never verify this, but unless he was just using artistic license, i find it hard to imagine he would not realise that an extremely large drive wheel would not turn the machine too slowly for normal usage.

Michael W

Yes, if you look at alot of the ancient monuments, and think of the inventions needed to make them also, Then you pretty much drive a coach and horses through the idea of "biological needs" being the primary driver of invention, clearly the pyramids in giza were never needed as such but the egyptians went to great lengths to design pyramids and tombs for themselves.

This kind of creativity can be witnessed in every society of people no matter how old. Even (and i don't say this in a derogatory sense because there isn't alot of proof they were dumb) the neanderthals had their own culture, due to interbreeding this has made their extinction causes unclear.

It is probably impossible to put a date on when people began being creative and develop culture because it seems to be inherent in our nature. Most skeletons haven't been found any older than around 200,000 years, but i suspect we will find older ones yet. The geological impact on the state of the remains can render them unrecognizable.

Michael G made a rather good point about the distinction between need and want (the separation of the two in the popular mindset was probably caused by the early labour party with their "social ills" campaign and perhaps even earlier with the christian concept of greed and gluttony) It's quite clear that we can create the need or desire for absolutely anything we wish and our bodies will adapt to that.

I have said before that i wager that the most interesting digs and discoveries are to be made right beneath our feet, the problem is we're still using the ground above! But if it's a good place to live today, it probably was a long time ago too.

Michael W