Screw Thread Solves 173-Year-Old Mystery
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- Опубликовано: 9 ноя 2024
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A new study from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England, published in The International Journal for the History of Engineering & Technology, has discovered that the Crystal Palace was the first building known to use a standard screw thread.
As an engineer, I don't understand what mystery it was to use a then well known standard from 1841 a decade later.
Using it in a building was the "innovation".
I guess context is why it's a mystery. Not knowing when these threads were standardized, I expected a fast screwing coarse thread which would speed up the process.
And there are already thread standardizations around 1777.
What was your major?
@@BritishEngineer Paine
As a nut and bolt fanatic, thanks for the insightful video. I really appreciate the fact that a bolt built to the correct specs fit a 170+ yr old nut. Which is how life is supposed to work. 🇺🇲
A N&B fanatic, eh? Well, show your mettle, sir! While I'm not a fastener vendor, I have approximately 250K fasteners here, not counting the rivets (another 90K or so). You?
You're a nutter, he's a bolter @@davidg3944 😅😅😅
Just go metric. Much easier.
@@bryankirk Furlongs are the future (and the past)!
🔩🔩🔩
And 150 years later, patrons of automotive parts stores are still struggling with the affliction of different screw threads for everything... *Sigh*
DON'T get me started!
Early 1850s - Late 1930s is a helluva run for a "temporary" building!
I bet it was ready to fall even without the fire.
Check out the Eiffel Tower. It is also a temporary structure. Built for the 1889 Exposition Universelle (Worlds Fair). It was only supposed to remain until 1909.
@@ewhartiii True, Amazing that 19th Century "temporary" structures were built SO MUCH better than the "permanent" ones built today. I live in Pittsburgh, PA (USA) and we have a pretty cool Convention Center. It was built in 2003. Scary part IS the "Old" convention center it REPLACED was opened in 1981 when I was 20 years old! I'm just wondering if I will be around to see the THIRD one or perhaps even the FOURTH one! - at THIS pace...It's possible. LOL.
I can't prove it with specific examples, but I expect that there are still a lot of buildings intended to be 'temporary' that are still in use which were built during WWII.
@@Mishn0 There used to be a lot more of those in the 1970's and 1980's in the USA. Many have rusted out and been pulled down since then.
I lived near the Crystal Palace ruins while growing up and the grounds were fun to play in. I am 83 now and moved out many
years ago. I understand a new building is proposed as a venue. Thank's for posting.
Whitworth threads (36 to the inch) are still used in microscope objective lens mounts.
And metric pipe threads…
All camera mounting screw threads today are still made 1/4" Whitworth thread.
And, believe it or not, some self assembly beds!
@@Tuckaway They are not Whitworth threads; they are imperial 1/4 inch diameter, 20 threads per inch. Whitworth threads have 55 degrees included angle, whereas standard national coarse (UNC) thread has 60 degree included angle. For cameras & lenses too heavy for 1/4-20 thread, they use 5/16-18 thread. For larger lenses, 3/8-16 thread is used.
I'd wish they could narrate this without background "music". Scr*w the music.
YOU MEANT TO PUT THE QUOTES AROUND SCREW, NOT AROUND MUSIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What music? There is a little at the end, only.
I don't understand how the use and manufacturing of these threads became a mystery in the first place. No construction specs exist? Not one person wrote about doing this, at the time? And so on. How did all the information about such an immense, important and innovative building remain a secret, and then, vanish?
So much info about the Crystal Palace doesn't exist anymore..
Maybe the war or maybe stupidity..
So, how did a steel and glass structure burn up?
Lots of paint, linseed oil putty, timber, etc in the building, all flammable materials.
Just like now, we'll never know, governments hide things like that. Look at Notre Dame.
Jet fuel morty
Contents also burned.
You're omitting a lot about BSW threads...
Sure, the standardisation was a boon, but the thread profile is, well, amazing.
The tips and troughs are rounded, not sharp (part of the standard). As such they don't sieze nearly as much.
Annecdote time:
I was involved in he restoration of a 150 year old cast iron water wheel.
Thanks to Whitworth thread, and a bucket load of red lead oxide putty, the nuts and bolts came undone with hand held spanners (wrenches).
A Whit thread; done up tight for 100 years, give it a quarter turn and you can do the rest with your fingers.
Also the best thread for cast iron.
Actually the whitworth thread was optimised for wrought iron (not cast iron).
Whitworth above all was a machinist trained by the British inventor of the screw cutting metal working lathe - Henry Maudslay.
His first two standard bolts, the 5/8th inch had a one inch across flats head (because it was made from 1” square bar) and the other the 1/2” bolt had a 0.707” head - what you get when you take a 1” round bar and cut it square to take a wrench. Square headed bolts and nuts are still used for railway applications…
I partially disagree . The lack sharp points and corners ( as in Acme threads ) gives the Whitworth an advantage of fracture resistance over just about all other designs . I think this feature is more valuable than seize resistance ,,, !
@@rolandtamaccio3285 Acme threads are designed for linear force without binding.
BA/Thury threads are optimised for brass.
Whitworth threads are optimised for wrought iron and vibration resistance.
Metric and Unified threads were optimised to look pretty on a drawing with 60 degree thread angles…
(As a note the British Association threads copied the Swiss metric Thury threads with the exception of rounding radiuses).
@@rolandtamaccio3285 👍
I guess you don't live in the rust belt, or Scotland...
We'd probably need to go back in time and ask Mr Whitworth what his priorities were...
So aliens didn't build it then?
Egyptians did.
Pretty cool fact, just a shame Witworth wasn't recognised at the time for his unified bolt thread design.
Well, I guess they really screwed that up...
Indeed, one of the few times, then, that screwing up merited a pat on the back versus a kick to the bottom.
Booooooooo! :)
@@Ferd414 The best puns are greeted with groans.😁
@@craigsudman4556 Or small, thrown objects - French fries were a favored choice in the Commons of the community college I atteneded for a while...
It’s amazing how the smallest, most overlooked developments and inventions can change the world.
don't complain about what he is not telling what do you want a 3 hour video
I’ve always wondered how a building made of metal and glass managed to burn down.
It was used as a store by the BBC and was chocker full of imflammable stuff.
@@fredericksaxton3991 molten glass? it's a building, not a furnace.
find the reference the BBC held inflammable "stuff" in 1936
@@luigicirelli2583 Where do I say 'molten glass'? Crystal Palace was full of stuff in storeage which caught fire and burned destroying the integrity of the superstructure which collapsed. End of.
@@fredericksaxton3991 I heard you; careful, the frame and glass of your car is going to melt in case of a fire - NOT!
It doesn’t have to melt. Steel will soften long before it melts. Once the steel in the lower part starts to soften due to the heat of the burning contents, it will collapse under the weight of the upper levels.
Having lived near Crystal Palace and studied many aspects of it I never knew or considered how the components were joined. Thank you most interesting. Paxton was a genius.
I've got a set of Wentworth wrenches. Also, growing up in a machine shop, making a bolt to copy something already made is just daily business. Not nearly as difficult as you'd think.
It's nice to hear positive news about Whitworths. The number of times I've gone "[expletive deleted], it's a Whitworth" over the years. I didn't realise it was the first!
We learned about Withworth in history class, as a key figure of the industrial revolution.
Some years back, my boss was Henry, a Swiss engineer. He told me that when he was doing his degree in Switzerland (in Mech. and Production Enginering), one of his professors gave a lecture on thread forms, and put a silhouette of a Whitworth thread form up on the screen, blown up so that, from root to crest, it was about 10 feet tall.
The professor went through it, point by point, covering the angles, the radii at root and crest, and explained that it was designed by an engineering genius, an Englishman called Sir Joseph Whitworth. He went on to say that Sir Joseph had carried out such a perfect analysis of all the forces on a thread form, that his design was, at the time, the strongest bi-directional thread form in the world. Furthermore, he said, over a century later, *NOBODY* has ever come up with a stronger design of bi-directional thread - and he gave it as his opinion that nobody ever would.
Then he put up a similar sized silhouette of a Metric thread form - and Henry said the whole class cringed at how *CRUDE* it looked in comparison! The professor went through that design, absolutely savaging every weak point it had. Finally, one brave soul put his hand up to ask if the Metric thread had any advantages at all.
"Only ONE!", thundered the professor; "It's *CHEAP!* And that is it its ONLY advantage! And I am ASHAMED that so many Swiss precision engineering companies are using this cheap and crude design in their products!"
And this was the building the credit for which was given to Joseph Paxton, a man with no technical, engineering or architectural background or training - he was a gardener. Something's wrong with the History here...
Read "the Home" by Bill Bryson. Excellent read and quite a bit about Paxton. Genius!
Paxton was a pioneer of greenhouse technology. He was head gardener at Chatsworth House, seat of the Dukes of Devonshire, in Derbyshire (and Chatsworth is a very large estate with extensive gardens). By this time, George Stephenson, who pioneered the steam locomotive, lived close by at Tapton House, and is known to have visited Chatsworth. I wouldn't be surprised if Stephenson told Paxton about engineering, such as standard bolts, to help him with his glasshouse construction.
The Crystal Palace was really only a scaled-up version of the Great Conservatory at Chatsworth.
That explains my fascination with a bucket of bolts and screws ! Thx. 👍
Compared to the first construction: How fast was the deconstruction at the first site and then the reconstruction at the second site? Were those unrushed and more leisurely?
Whitworth spedified his tread shapes in 1841.They quickly became 'standard in industry. Crystal Palace was built in 1854 - 13 years later. Why is it surprising that they were used in the crystal palace? That's like being surprised that microsoft windows was being used in banks in 1995.
The Crystal Palace was built in 1851, not 1854, to house the Great Exhibition. This only got so many visitors because of the railways, and now it seems that technology popularised by the railways (the standard nut and bolt) was used to build the Palace as well.
When BA threads where introduced in about 1910 . There were thinking even then of using metric threads .
BA was the first standardised British metric thread.
They should have gone full metric. British cars were shit because of it.
@@jpcaretta8847 They would have been shit whatever the thread. Shouldn’t have used rusty Russian steel.
I served an engineering apprenticeship in the late 1960s.There were multiple thread forms in use.Whitworth,British association,Cycle,Bsp,Unified fine,unified coarse,Acme,metric coarse and metric fine.The diameters,thread angles,pitches,peak and core forms,thread fits and tolerances,could all be found in engineering reference books or for quick access theZEUS book.
Thank you I never have it much thought about this before now.
how do you burn down glass and cast iron
One good (or annoying) thing about Whitworth or BSF is that nut and bolt head sizes were also standardized. If it is a ¼ inch W bolt, you use a ¼ inch W wrench, even though the flats on the wrench are about 9/16th apart. The family sailboat originally had a 2-cylinder Lister air-cooled diesel engine.
You know, I always wondered why Whitworth spanner sizes didn't make sense - And now they do 😊 Thanks
@@peterjackhandy This is one of many obscure facts I have learned in 79 years. For example, the first game the Chicago Cubs played in Wrigley Field was in what city? Los Angeles. (Wrigley Field Chicago had a different name. The name was changed, but an exposition game was played in LA before the regular season.)
This video should’ve provided background by explaining that Whitworth was a great pioneer of precision engineering.
I am a hardware guy and interested but the undermusic makes it impossible to view this video. I really wish you all would stop that
There is no music. Do you have tinnitus?
@@suburbanbanshee I have a nice sound system and there very much is a music track. I am a musician that hears music first then verbiage
Very interesting video. I spent 30 years as a machinist, I also owned a Triumph motorcycle in the 70's and now own an old Land Rover. I spent a lot of time on a lathe making custom threads when I worked for a manufacturing plant with old propitiatory equipment. I had no Idea Whit worth were the first standardized threads. It does make sense though as shortly after was when production plants were able to mas produce interchangeable parts, and threads were a large part of that.
"Puzzled".... There wasn't any puzzle, it was built that quickly as it was pre-fabricated (and indeed moved) to be built for the Great Exhibition (of Industrial prowess) and the Standard Bolt was literally one of the innovations being put on show in the show... There's no puzzle here, no mystery....
If this International Journal article proves anything it is that the writers themselves forgot a bunch of pretty recent knowledge; we can forgive lost knowledge from Ancient times, from even the Dark Ages, but from less than 200 years ago, ner that's on you.
I think of this more as a verbal article than a serious "we had no idea". He's presenting the story in a way that catches the interest of people more than "how standard screw threads improved building efficiency".
lots of pretty recent knowledge is lost... polaroid springs to mind... the whole thermodynamic aspect of steam seems lost on the average "content creator"...
who knows morse code still?
most of the last two generations cant even read properly... or count...
@@zendell37 I hope it's just misconception. Otherwise they'd create misinformation to sell a concept.
The thread on the bottom of your camera to fit on a tripod is 1/4 whitworth
Gee, I guess they finally worked out how to read in university!
F*** i learned this doing an apprenticeship 60 years ago!
I remember seeing an interview with a lady teaching a ballet class in the Palace.
A student came back to her class and said there was a small fire in a toilet (think). The teacher didn't seem concerned and carried on with her class!
Whitworth nuts and bolts were still used on British motorcycles up to the 1960's.
Right up my alley. I've been trying to figure out when broom handle thread was standardized the way it is now in the United States at least.
Search under National Broom Handle and Head Taps and dies. I once found a die for that operation in my trousers don't remember the maker it was a standard pocket knife variety
@@DonMason-cv6og Thank you. I love questions which are easy to ask and hard to answer, and the broom handle thread question is my private favorite example. I did have one friend who got obsessed with it, and went as far as to call some (North American) broom manufacturers, None of them knew either, but their consensus was "sometime before WWII". I have since learned that (of course) there are different standards in different parts of the world. I'm in Kentucky, anyone want me to mail them a paint roller attachment so they can check the thread? :)
I had a set of whitworth spanner’s back in the 70s.
Standards were adopted to assure interchangeability between different manufacturers. All the screws made for the palace would have been the same regardless of standards, so adopting a standard would have made no difference to the construction of the palace.
Burned down, how?
It was the internal contents that were combustible. Once a big fire gets going, the glass and steelwork doesn't stand a chance. I hate drawing a parallel, but on 9/11, the World Trade Centre structure was weakened by the fires leading to the collapse.
And here I was thinking it was a super coarse low TPI so they could be screwed in faster forgetting that standard threads are a fairly recent invention.
Imagine being the guy who has to find the matching nuts and bolts in a mixed up pile.
Do that every time I look in my bucket of bits!🤣
My bang up to date camera has 1/4" Whit thread on its tripod mount.
Standardisation is what led the way.
Glass and Cast iron "burnt dwn " .. .,🤔
Wood floors
My thought, also.
The heat melted the glass and the structure deformed then collapsed.
how can you turn it into a furnace to melt glass and steel ridiculous
@@luigicirelli2583 It doesn't have to melt, just go soft and bend.
A metal and glass building can burn the same way a steel frame cement building burns. The metal and glass are just the outside walls.
You mention: [The Crystal Palace is the earliest known building to use Whitworth screw thread] and [Researchers discovered Whitworth screw threads in a column bolt in the building's remains as well as in a nearby water tower designed to power the Crystal Palace's fountains.]
Which of the two were build first? Or was the water tower only present at the second site (I doubt that)? Even if considered ancillary, I would bet given the speed of building it was put up first and the palace foundation piped before the glass structure was erected.
How could threads made that quality not be standardized?
Sooo, "researchers" didn't know to consult the building's plans, which were certainly archived somewhere? Deary me!
I got one guy trying to tell me about the rust belt , another about linear motion . Well , I didn't even mention buttress threads , I just used Acme as another example of sharp corners . I lived and worked in the area of high stressed fasteners , and a fracture was far worse than a seized bolt ,,, !
Read "the Home" by Bill Bryson to find out more about Paxton and the Crystal Palace! Paxton was an absolute genius!
Hard work and no government involvement that's how.
Witworth didn't invent the screw, he simply used his influence and connections to standardise it. No different to today, where the biggest companies get to dictate technology, never the little ones.
What's always baffled me, is how a building made completely of glass and iron could burn down so quickly? I mean I guess it was the contents that burnt, but still.
Iron and glass do not handle the heat of a fire well, things start stretching and moving, then fall down.
Wood was also involved in the Palace's construction.
How was it fimished so fast? A lack ofiddle mamagment and interference.
Its also in old records that they used whitworth. We wertr taught this at uni in the early 2000s
Cool. Thanks
So cool
And I bet when it was reassembled there was a column and two screws left over 🤔🤣
Were they called screw threads back then? Cause its a threaded bolt now.
Hang on....what mystery?
…will it take another 173 years to find out how cast iron burns down…?
English system measurements. TAKE THAT, Metric!!!!
1:56 You don’t “invent” a Standard
I hate to burst your bubble but my best friend's neighbor's brother's friend told me it was made out of pasta (original name was noodle palace)
What no drawings?
The automatic closed captions are changing Whitworth to ‘witor’. Just useless
Yeah, but you can't fit the original DEEZ NUTZ!
Sometimes the Algorithm just knows…
"Founded" I bet.. Not built.
I bet a population reset happened and after the survivors found this city.
So, for some reason the elites in power had the building torn down! Either, because of the building's technology or it because the building was some how limiting control over the people. So by tearing down the building the memory, history, and word of mouth would too fade away.
With no sudden technology leap it would make society easier to control and from getting out of hand.
People may see pictures of the building randomly, but not everyone will have a constant photo copy to study and discuss together.
In that day and age is was harder to do things. Way more steps. Everyone was busy. Then with family, work, and life in general. The time would fly.
What building?
Just so I'm clear, the metal and glass building burnt down? Okay sure.
my wood burners are in cast iron and steel; never burned down
I had read in recreational reading it was bombed by the British so it wouldn't light the way for German planes. I don't know.
The flooring was wooden slats with tons of fluff brushed down . Same cause as Kings Cross tube. Once it was alight they couldn't stop it because so many people blocked the streets that fire crews had difficulty getting through. Glass melts at 1000 C so that added to the furnace. Started as a small fire in the central transept and rapidly spread.
@@AHBeltThe two towers were demolished because it was claimed the German bombers were using them as guides as they were on top of a hill. Loads of photographs really interesting subject but ultimately became unprofitable so it was doomed anyhow. Check out Joseph Paxton's Stove at Chatsworth to see what else he designed in glass.
@@lucifarian93 oh yeah? you were there with your smartphone documenting the furnace that left puddles of molten glass and steel because the floorboards and fluff burned as hot as military grade thermite?
Metric or imperial?
No
Dumb it down bro…😂
Get out of vision! We don't need to see you.
Hmmm……. Nice try😏
Hogwash
😀
No mystery, no puzzle, clickbait content mill junk
🔩🔩🔩
Why does…this guy…talk like a…1960s newscaster? It’s very…annoying…to say…the least.
Funny, these standard doomed the UK industry as metric became the world standard. Same happening in the US. Non metric companies unable to sell outside the us, poor quality, more expensive...
Not so fast! Metric threads are mostly CRAP. All the work that US engineers did over 100 years, optimizing threads, balancing break strength against stripping strength. Design for manufacture ability, having all threads being a division of ONE length unit so lathe requires fewer change-gears to cut different threads. Europe TRASHED all that & now we have thread standard that is intolerant to manufacturing tolerances, stripping out when stressed. (Metric bolts from China just don't work!) Metric threads are harder to set up & cut on lathe because of the European's aversion to fractions. Even the bolt head design was monkeyed with, causing the heads to strip out or the driver blade to twist. THERE IS A LOT MORE TO MECHANICAL DESIGN THAN A LENGTH UNIT!
If you get in airplane, better hope that it is bolted together with hardware made to "army-navy standard", based on the inch, if you want it to hold together!
@bpark10001 cut the crap retard ! Guys like you are the laughing stock of the world of science and engineering.
Flash forward to WWII. The Brits still hadn't mastered standardization and the US had to build the Rolls Royce Merlin engines for the Brits.
What history book are you reading?
The British designed and built the RR Merlin for themselves, the US built the Merlin under license for US use in the P-51.
@@Surestick88 As I understood it, the British Merlins were still fitted together, resulting in each engine very much having its own personality.
Utter baloney.
@@leifvejby8023 Yes, the British were still "fitting" each engine together. If a new part was needed, it could not be taken off the shelf. It had to be fitted to the specific engine they were working on. They had no concept of tolerances which made all parts interchangeable and allowed high production rates. If it hadn't been for US production techniques, the people of England would be eating wienerschnitzel at this moment.
The American engineers found the British tolerances on the original parts to be far looser than their machines could produce. The original Merlin required hand finishing of parts to fit correctly. American machines enabled the Merlin to be put together like the standard Ford auto engines of the time: on an assembly line with no time-consuming "finishers".
I have photograph of small sheet map guiding visitors to new location in upper Sydenham when Palace moved. Whitworth great innovator as well. Metric thread used by opticians from c.1900.
New railway station built- Crystal Palace High Level - for visitors which had/ has tiled underpass directly into building.Used to be open occasionally. I have a short on utube ‘The Coach Wrench’ which relates to manufacture around this time.
interesting. i probably wrenched on millions of nuts n bolts over the years, and neaver pondered this. 🔩🍻
And I bet when it was reassembled there was a column and two screws left over 🤔🤣