1-158-314 - Oxford Science Archive/Heritage Images

Needle-making equipment, 1819. The large machine at bottom right is George Prior's dry grinder with a box partly enclosing the grindstone to minimise dust (1813). Needle grinders were some of the best paid industrial workers but the dust from the grinding wheels and the metal of the needle wire was a lethal mixture and they often died in their early 30s from lung disease. From Encyclopaedia Londinensis. (London, 1819).