He goes on as usual to the various
conditions which attach to the process of planing, and says further:
"if a cutting roller of this sort be placed with its axis horizontal
and the bench beneath, it may be made to rise and lower. The bench
(machine) may be very readily adjusted, so as to determine the
thickness to which a piece will be reduced by being passed under the
roller." "To gain time, cutters may be applied to different sides of a
piece at once, and such of them as make parallel cuts may be mounted
on the same spindle."
These extracts would not be out of place in an explanatory lecture or
essay on woodcutting at the present day, and cannot help awakening
surprise that they should have been written eighty-three years ago,
when there had, so far as we know, been no precedents, nor even
suggestions from previous practice.
The foregoing shows that nearly all the fundamental principles, upon
which woodcutting by machinery in its present development depends,
were familiar to Sir Samuel Bentham, and though his name has been
almost forgotten, it may be safely asserted that he gave to the world
more useful inventions than any other man of his age. His work shows
throughout a constant method and system of reasoning, which point
rather to a life of persistent labor than to one of what would
ordinarily be called genius.
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