3-017-012 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The late Mr. Richard Roberts, mechanician and engineer, 1864. Portrait of '...one of those single-minded servants of science and the useful arts whose fate is, too often, to be poor while making many rich, and whose fame but gilds the memory of such ill-rewarded benefactors of their age...[Richard Roberts'] extraordinary inventive genius and his skill as a practical engineer contributed, to an incalculable extent, to increase the wealth, not only of England, but of the whole civilised world. Yet he has died in poverty, after a long, a blameless, and a laborious life...[He] made the first planing-machine for iron...His slotting-machine and wheelcutting engine soon followed; and these, with his improvements in the slide-lathe, may be regarded as among the most important of the aids which invention has given to the construction of machinery. This series of inventions introduced a precision, celerity, and cheapness into that branch of production never before known; their economical results have extended, not only to the largest engines of ocean steam-ships, and to the thousand-handed machinery of the great factories of Lancashire, but down to the railway-ticket press and the sewing-machine'. From "Illustrated London News", 1864.