The Early Nineteenth-Century Chain Testing Machines

Abstract

The first large chain testing machines of the nineteenth century were introduced when the Navy Board changed from hemp anchor cables to wrought iron chain cables. They were some 100 ft (c. 33 m) in length with a capacity of about 100 tons (1 MegaNewton). Nothing seems to have been brought together about the many diverse references to these machines to paint a picture of how such anchor chains came into use and how the first proving machines were developed and used. The main protagonist in this picture is Samuel Brown, whose work on chain link suspension bridges has been well documented, together with just one or two others, namely Thomas Brunton, a merchant, and Robert Flinn, a blacksmith. Brown and Brunton set up their works near Millwall in London, while Flinn worked on the Tyne. Within a few years such machines had spread to most ports and dockyards in the country. A fairly comprehensive picture has emerged although many details will never be known. A small picture of Flinn’s machine appears on his note paper but only one scrap view has been found for each of Brown’s mechanical machine of 1814 and Brunton’s hydraulic machine of 1813.

Keywords:

• Chain testing machines
• Robert Flinn
• Thomas Brunton
• Simon Goodrich
• Samuel Brown
• Multiple lever weighing system
• Twisted chain links

As a friend of the Kirkaldy Testing Museum, 99, Southwark Street, London SE1 which houses Kirkaldy’s famous 400-ton capacity (c. 4 MN) machine of 1862, which is still in working order, I found it natural to ask ‘What went before?’ Apart from some dozen small machines, the obvious important ones were the large chain testing machines of the early nineteenth century.

All the references quoted here have been examined at source by the writer. Any mistakes in attribution or interpretation are therefore his alone. The work of Chester Gibbons as a source of information on many old machines is gratefully acknowledged,157 as are the papers of Simon Goodrich at the Science Museum Library. Despite now being a non-technical library, the London Library has a rich store of technical books and journals from the turn of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries acquired for satisfying the needs of many early members who were polymaths. The use of the inter-library loan scheme is also gladly acknowledged and also the permission to publish the illustrations, Figure 1 from the Royal Pavilion and Museums, Brighton & Hove, Figures 2–4 from the Institution of Naval Architects and Figures 5–9 from the Science Museum.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

C E Turner

C E Turner, CBE, DSc FIMechE, FREng was Emeritus Professor of Materials in Mechanical Engineering at Imperial College, London. He was appointed to Imperial by Sir Hugh Ford in 1948 and remained at the College except for a brief secondment to the National Physical Laboratory in the mid 1970s. He published one book Introduction to Plate and Shell Theory (Longmans, 1965) and contributed significantly to Post-yield Fracture Mechanics (Latzko ed., Applied Science Publishers, 1979, 2nd edn, Elsevier Applied Science, 1984). He also wrote over 150 papers published across a wide range of journals in his field of fracture mechanics. He was appointed CBE in 1987. In his retirement he started researching early testing machines as a result of his voluntary work at the Kirkaldy Testing Museum in Southwark Street, London. This is his final paper; he died in February 2010.

Correspondence to the author’s daughter: [email protected]