From the archive: what was MACH like a hundred years ago?

Held at the Olympia exhibition centre in West Kensington, London, the show had much in common with its modern-day iteration and was established as a showcase of the very latest production equipment.

“There is scarcely a department of engineering science which is not represented,” wrote The Engineer.  “From quite the most up to date system of steam raising…to foundry equipment, gas engines, oil engines, air compressors, transmission of power by oil, toothed gearing of the most modern design, tin box making machines, scientific instruments and the engineering press.”

Over the course of several issues The Engineer explored these technologies in detail – and identified a number of welcome, and not so welcome trends. “Looking back over the wide range of machine tools exhibited, one cannot help being particularly struck with the progress made in the design of lathes and gear cutting machinery,” it reported.

The publication was less impressed by what it viewed as an over-complication of machine tool technologies.  “There is perhaps an inclination on the part of some designers at the present day to provide a machine which will do anything and everything,” it wrote.  “The result in many cases is a machine too complicated for the managers of engineering workshop and probably too expensive for the smaller jobbing workshops.” It would be interesting to see what The Engineer’s Victorian reporters would make of the multi-tasking machines that dominate the sector today.