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| c. 1794 button shank machine at Thinktank Museum, Birmingham. |
Between the 1790s and about 1807 Ralph Heaton (1755-1832) ran a brass foundry on Slaney Street, so making a variety of brass wares, where he also made rose engines. A biographical description of Ralph's stated that he had:
invented a most curious machine for making of button shanks, of so complicated a nature that although he did not obtain a patent for it, and admits every mechanic readily to see it, there is not one who could ever construct another.*
The button shank was at the back of a button, and was what attached the button to clothing. The machine was so 'curious' and 'complicated' because it worked in a fully automated process. Richard Prosser, in 1881, described the process as 'of great interest as being probably the first example of a machine in which the material is subjected to a series of independent operations succeeding each other at regulated intervals of time'.** The machine was powered by steam.
Although the article stated otherwise, Ralph did obtain a patent for his machine, in 1794, and examples of his curious machines are held at London Science Museum and Thinktank Birmingham.
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| c. 1794 button shank machine in the London Science Museum. |
** Richard Prosser, Birmingham Inventors and Inventions (1881).