The history of the lathe

Lathe is an important and essential tool in any engineer’s toolkit. It is one of the oldest tools developed by humans. It is still helping to improve our lives in many ways. Lathe is widely used to make many objects such as cue sticks, candle stick holders, legs of tables, crank shafts, baseball bats and camshafts. It is basically a machine tool which can rotate a chunk of materials to carry out diverse operations such as sanding, knurling, cutting, drilling or complete deformation of the material piece with the help of some tools. The tools will work on wood or any other material, and can craft an object having symmetry about an axis of rotation.

The history of lathe dates back to ancient Egyptian culture. So this ancient tool was very popular at that time and was used by famous empires. Assyria, the Roman Empire, Byzantine Empires, and Greek are a few among them. History tells the lathe was originated around 1300BC by the Egyptians. They produced a lathe, which can be operated by two persons. One person used to cut and make shapes using sharp tools on the wood while the other person would rotate the wood piece with the help of a rope.

Later the Romans modified the Egyptian design of Lathe by adding a turning bow. This kind of turning lathes with bow was very popular in Germany, Britain and France at that time. All these countries developed and used these types of Lathe for various purposes. This kind of lathe was mainly used for indoor activities.

The middle Ages witnessed some revolutionary improvements in the design of Lathe. Lathes were produced to meet commercial needs. A pedal was introduced to replace the tiring hand operated method of rotating wood. It helped the workers to free their hands from holding the wood pieces while crafting objects. Often a straight grained sapling used to act as a pole to connect the pedal in these times. The pole lathe was used to make chair legs and other such parts. There was no continuous spinning of the wheel in these lathes and it could move only forward and backward. For the next working stroke the workers have to revolve it back to its original position.

Another common Lathe developed in early 20^th century was spring pole lathe. These spring pole lathes are popular even now. The older version of today’s power lathes were the two person lathe also known as great lathe. In this, the crafting operation needs two people, a master to craft the wood and one assistant or apprentice to turn the wood.

The form and appearance of lathe was modified completely during the industrial revolution. The lathe was fully motorized to create and cut items faster than ever. Motorized lathe produced more and more items both in wood and in metals during this period. Because of the greater rotational power of motorized lathes, high quality work was produced in lesser time.

But today most of the modern lathes used in industries are computer operated for maximum production. Computerization in modern commercial lathes eliminated the cost of manpower and increased precision and accuracy in making objects and tools.