Editing James Nasmyth (section)

===The steam hammer===
In 1837, the Great Western Steam Company was experiencing many problems forging the paddle shaft of the [[SS Great Britain|SS ''Great Britain'']]; when even the largest hammer was tilted to its full height its range was so small that if a really large piece of work were placed on the anvil, the hammer had no room to fall, and in 1838 the company's engineer ([[Francis Humphries]]) wrote to Nasmyth: "I find there is not a forge-hammer in England or Scotland powerful enough to forge the paddle-shaft of the engine for the Great Britain! What am I to do?”

Nasmyth thought the matter over and seeing the obvious defects of the [[trip hammer|tilt-hammer]] (it delivered every blow with the same force) sketched out his idea for the first [[steam hammer]].  He kept his ideas for new devices, mostly in drawings, in a "Scheme Book" which he freely showed to his foreign customers. Nasmyth made a sketch of his steam hammer design dated 24 November 1839, but the immediate need disappeared when the practicality of screw propellers was demonstrated and the ''Great Britain'' was converted to that design.{{sfn|Boutany|1885|p=59}}

The French engineer [[François Bourdon]] came up with the similar idea of what he called a "Pilon" in 1839 and made detailed drawings of his design, which he also showed to all engineers who visited the works at [[Le Creusot]] owned by the brothers [[Adolphe Schneider|Adolphe]] and [[Eugène Schneider]].{{sfn|Boutany|1885|p=59}}
However, the Schneiders hesitated to build Bourdon's radical new machine.
Bourdon and Eugène Schneider visited the Nasmyth works in England in the middle of 1840, where they were shown Nasmyth's sketch.
This confirmed the feasibility of the concept to Schneider.{{sfn|Chomienne|1888|p=254}} 
In 1840 Bourdon built the first steam hammer in the world at the [[Schneider & Cie]] works at Le Creusot.
It weighed {{convert|2500|kg}} and lifted to {{convert|2|m}}. The Schneiders patented the design in 1841.{{sfn|François BOURDON: Archives Côte d’Or}}

In April 1842 Nasmyth visited France with a view to supplying the French arsenals and dockyards with tools and while he was there took the opportunity to visit the [[Le Creusot]] works.  On going round the works, he found the steam-hammer at work. 
By his account, Bourdon took him to the forge department so he might, as he said, "see his own child".  Nasmyth said "there it was, in truth&ndash;a thumping child of my brain!"{{sfn|Boutany|1885|p=59}}
Nasmyth patented his design in June 1842 using money borrowed from [[Anne Nasmyth|his sister Anne]]'s husband William Bennett.{{sfn|Smiles|2015|loc=Ch. XV}} He built his first steam hammer later that year in his Patricroft foundry.{{sfn|Nasmyth|Smiles|1883|p=259}}
In 1843 a dispute broke out between the two engineers over priority of invention of the steam hammer.{{sfn|Nasmyth steam hammer}}

[[File:James Nasmyth's patent steam hammer.jpg|thumb|upright|James Nasmyth's patent steam hammer as illustrated in ''[[Tomlinson's Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts]]'', 1854]]

By using the hammer, production costs could be reduced by over 50 percent, while at the same time improving the quality of the forgings produced.

The first hammers were of the free-fall type but they were later modified, given power-assisted fall.  Up until then, the invention of Nasmyth's steam-hammer, large forging, such as ships' [[anchor]]s, had to be made by the "bit-by-bit" process, that is, small pieces were forged separately and finally welded together.  A key feature of his machine was that the operator controlled the force of each blow.  He enjoyed showing off its capability by demonstrating how it could first break an egg placed in a wine glass, without breaking the glass, which was followed by a full-force blow which shook the building.  Its advantages soon became so obvious that before long Nasmyth hammers were to be found in all the large workshops all over the country.

An original Nasmyth hammer now stands facing Nasmyth's Patricroft foundry buildings (now a 'business park'). A larger Nasmyth & Wilson steam hammer stands in the campus of the [[University of Bolton]].

Nasmyth subsequently applied the principle of his steam hammer to a [[Pile driver|pile-driving machine]] which he invented in 1843.  His first full scale machine used a four-ton hammer-block, and a rate of eighty blows per minute.  The pile driver was first demonstrated in a contest with a team using the conventional method at Devonport on 3 July 1845.  He drove a pile 70 feet long and 18&nbsp;inches squared in four and a half minutes, while the conventional method required twelve hours.  This was a great success, and many orders for his pile driver resulted.  It was used for many large scale constructions all over the world in the next few years, such as the [[High Level Bridge, River Tyne|High Level Bridge]] at [[Newcastle upon Tyne]] and the [[Nile]] [[barrage (dam)|barrage]] at [[Aswan]], Egypt ([[Aswan Low Dam]]).

By 1856 a total of 490 hammers had been produced which were sold across Europe to Russia, India and even Australia, and accounted for 40% of James Nasmyth and Company's revenues.