Sir Joseph Whitworth was born in Stockport on the 21st December 1803, the son of a local schoolmaster. He was at first educated by his father and then taught at William Vint’s school in Leeds. At the age of 14 he was apprenticed to his uncle’s cotton mill in Derbyshire. In 1821 he left the mill and went to work for Crighton & Co in Manchester, who were machine makers. He left in 1825 to work at Henry Maudsley’s works in London. Maudsley’s was to set the seed for Sir Joseph to develop standardisation & precision measurement equipment. He worked for one or two other engineering companies before starting his own company in 1833 in Manchester. The company grew from a handful of employees to employing 750 in 1874.

By 1878 Sir Joseph had many patents including knitting machines, road sweepers, steel manufacture and 20 for armaments, even though he was a pacifist. At the 1851 Great Exhibition he exhibited a notable measuring machine that could measure to a millionth of an inch, and he won more medals than any other exhibitor. He went on to exhibit at many more international exhibitions, again with great success whilst promoting his products.

His most notable invention is the Whitworth thread, which has a standardised thread pitch for various sizes of nuts and bolts. Previous to this nuts and bolts were not interchangeable and were custom made. This was the precursor for production line manufacturing, as any nut would fit any bolt of the same size. Along side this, the added ability to manufacture & measure equipment very precisely gave an additional improvement in quality & fit of equipment. Without the intervention of Sir Joseph and his precision & standardisation methods such things as the modern motorcar could not be mass manufactured today and thus would cost a fortune to produce.

Sir Joseph also manufactured precision machine tools to sell to customers, far in advance of anything on the market at the time. He also developed rifles and canons, which were extremely accurate and were made using his precision tool systems. Unfortunately they were not widely adopted by the UK but were used to great effect by other countries and both sides in the American Civil War used Whitworth canons. The Whitworth company eventually merged with Armstrong in 1897 and they again merged with Vickers in 1927. So the Whitworth standards of engineering continued into the 20th century. He supported engineering scholarships at Manchester University and he also issued the ”Whitworth Medal” for the best student of the year, of which I have the medal presented in 1904 to Edward Macklin (on opposite page).

Sir Joseph became very rich and eventually bought a large country estate in Darley Dale, Derbyshire, including a large residence & grounds called Stancliffe Hall, which until quite recently, was a private school and is now in private ownership. The Hall stands on, you guessed it, Whitworth Road at Darley Dale. You gain access to Whitworth Road 100 metres north of the Grouse Inn on the A6 at Darley Dale. Sir Joseph died on the French Riviera on the 22 January 1887 and is buried at St Helen’s churchyard in Darley Dale. Sir Joseph’s widow used some of his wealth to leave a legacy of him in the Darley Dale district, notably the Whitworth Institute with adjacent large park, and the Whitworth Hospital, which are both still well used by the local community.

Mick Mackfall