the flax
trade was on the point of expiring, the spinners being unable to
produce yarn to a profit; and their almost immediate effect was to
reduce the cost of production, to improve immensely the quality of the
manufacture, and to establish the British linen trade on a solid
foundation. The production of flax-machinery became an important
branch of manufacture at Leeds, large quantities being made for use at
home as well as for exportation, giving employment to an increasing
number of highly skilled mechanics.[4] Mr. Murray's faculty for
organising work, perfected by experience, enabled him also to introduce
many valuable improvements in the mechanics of manufacturing. His
pre-eminent skill in mill-gearing became generally acknowledged, and
the effects of his labours are felt to this day in the extensive and
still thriving branches of industry which his ingenuity and ability
mainly contributed to establish. All the machine tools used in his
establishment were designed by himself, and he was most careful in the
personal superintendence of all the details of their construction. Mr.
Murray died at Leeds in 1826, in his sixty-third year.

We have not yet exhausted the list of claimants to the invention of the
Planing Machine, for we find still another in the person of Richard
Roberts of Manchester, one of the most prolific of modern inventors.
Mr. Roberts has indeed achieved so many undisputed inventions, that he
can readily afford to divide the honour in this case with others. He
has contrived things so various as the self-acting mule and the best
electro-magnet, wet gas-meters and dry planing machines, iron
billard-tables and turret-clocks, the centrifugal railway and the drill
slotting-machine, an apparatus for making cigars and machinery for the
propulsion and equipment of steamships; so that he may almost be
regarded as the Admirable Crichton of modern mechanics.

Richard Roberts was born in 1789, at Carreghova in the parish of
Llanymynech. His father was by trade a shoemaker, to which he
occasionally added the occupation of toll-keeper. The house in which
Richard was born stood upon the border line which then divided the
counties of Salop and Montgomery; the front door opening in the one
county, and the back door in the other. Richard, when a boy, received
next to no education, and as soon as he was of fitting age was put to
common labouring work. For some time he worked in a quarry near his
father's dwel