1. HISTORICAL SURVEY
Although there were others before and have been many since, James Nasmyth is always considered as the real father of the present day Forging Industry. His first steam-hammer made just over a hundred years ago weighed 2 1/2 cwt. and had an anvil of 4 1/2 tons, as compared with present-day hammers weighing upwards of 30 tons on anvils of 300-400 tons. Although Nasmyth’s hammers slide up and down between guides in the way that pile drivers do, the main forging industrial development in the counties of Kent and Sussex, and also in the district around Sheffield, was based on quite a different kind. This consisted of what, was in effect an ordinary hand-hammer, only very large, supplied with an anvil and fitted with a cam for raising and tripping.
Walter C. Andrews and J.H.A. Crockett