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Employees are the key to any entrepreneur’s success, and he must know them intimately, trust them completely and pay them generously.
Scottish engineer James Nasmyth, son of an Edinburgh artist, set up the Bridgewater Foundry in Patricroft, Salford, in 1836. He tells us in his Autobiography that in the competitive market of Victorian heavy industry, the key to success was making sure that his employees never wanted to work for anyone else.
Picture: © Jules Verne Times Two / julesvernex2.com / CC-BY-SA-4.0.. Source.
Posted May 25 2022
272
Henry Maudslay, the great engineer, had seen enough apprentices to last him a lifetime.
In 1829, artist Alexander Nasmyth tried to realise his son James’s abiding dream, an apprenticeship at Maudslay’s engineering firm in London. Presuming on a slight acquaintance, father and son presented themselves at Henry Maudslay’s home in Westminster, only to be told that apprentices had been such a disappointment that he would take no more. A guided tour of the factory was small compensation.
Picture: Pierre Louis (‘Henri’) Grevedon (1776-1860), via the National Portrait Gallery and Wikimedia Commons. Licence: ? Public domain.. Source.
Posted May 25 2022
273
A loyal Scotsman on the run from pro-English traitors disguised himself as a blacksmith’s apprentice, but soon gave himself away.
The Scottish surname Nasmyth or Naesmyth is said by scholars to derive, in all probability, from nail-smith. But Scottish engineer James Nasmyth, who appropriately enough in 1839 invented a steam hammer for making enormous iron bars, had heard a different tale, which he set down in his Autobiography.
Picture: John Neagle (1796–1865), Wikimedia Commons. Licence: Public domain.. Source.
Posted May 21 2022
274
Byron felt compelled to set the record straight after it was alleged that he had swum the Hellespont the easy way.
Every night, so the Greek myths tell us, Leander left Abydos in Asia Minor and swam across the narrow Hellespont to his lover Hero, priestess of Aphrodite at Sestos in Thrace, the European side, until he was drowned in bad weather. On May 3rd, 1810, George Gordon Byron and his friend Lt William Ekenhead swam the same stretch of water in the other direction, from Europe to Asia.
Picture: By Georg Balthasar Probst (1732-1801) 1750. Source.
Posted May 16 2022
275
Magnus, Earl of Orkney, disappointed King Magnus of Norway by refusing to get involved in somebody else’s war.
In 1098, Magnus III ‘Barelegs’, King of Norway, swept across the Scottish islands, reminding their governors that these territories belonged to the crown of Norway. Three brothers of Orkney, the earls Erlend, Magnus and Hakon, were obliged to accompany him as his fleet sailed west and then south down to Wales, where King Magnus barged into a fight between peoples who owed him no loyalty at all.
Picture: Wandernder Weltreisender 3.0.. Source.
Posted May 15 2022
276
A herd of goats is threatened by a pride of lions, and it falls to one brave billy to face the danger alone.
PV Ramaswami Raju published a collection of Indian Fables in 1887, shortly after he was called to the Bar and while he was teaching Indian languages at Oxford University and later at London. His fables are a creative blend of tradition and imagination: this one tells how one wily old goat saved the whole herd with an audacious bluff.
Picture: © Samyan Bahga, Wikimedia Commons. Licence: CC BY-SA 3.0.. Source.
Posted May 14 2022