aintaining their high reputation; and besides making largely for
the supply of the home demand, he exported much machinery abroad, to
France, Russia, and the Mauritius.

The present Messrs. Fox of Derby, who continue to carry on the business
of the firm, claim for their grandfather, its founder, that he made the
first planing machine in 1814,[1] and they add that the original
article continued in use until quite recently. We have been furnished
by Samuel Hall, formerly a workman at the Messrs. Fox's, with the
following description of the machine:--"It was essentially the same in
principle as the planing machine now in general use, although differing
in detail. It had a self-acting ratchet motion for moving the slides
of a compound slide rest, and a self-acting reversing tackle,
consisting of three bevel wheels, one a stud, one loose on the driving
shaft, and another on a socket, with a pinion on the opposite end of
the driving shaft running on the socket. The other end was the place
for the driving pulley. A clutch box was placed between the two
opposite wheels, which was made to slide on a feather, so that by means
of another shaft containing levers and a tumbling ball, the box on
reversing was carried from one bevel wheel to the opposite one." The
same James Fox is also said at a very early period to have invented a
screw-cutting machine, an engine for accurately dividing and cutting
the teeth of wheels, and a self-acting lathe. But the evidence as to
the dates at which these several inventions are said to have been made
is so conflicting that it is impossible to decide with whom the merit
of making them really rests. The same idea is found floating at the
same time in many minds, the like necessity pressing upon all, and the
process of invention takes place in like manner: hence the
contemporaneousness of so many inventions, and the disputes that arise
respecting them, as described in a previous chapter.

There are still other claimants for the merit of having invented the
planing machine; among whom may be mentioned more particularly Matthew
Murray of Leeds, and Richard Roberts of Manchester. We are informed by
Mr. March, the present mayor of Leeds, head of the celebrated
tool-manufacturing firm of that town, that when he first went to work
at Matthew Murray's, in 1814, a planing machine of his invention was
used to plane the circular part or back of the D valve, which he had by
that time introduced in the