Portsmouth Block Mills

The Portsmouth Block Mills form part of the Portsmouth Dockyard at Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, and were built during the Napoleonic Wars to supply the British Royal Navy with pulley blocks. They started the age of mass-production using all-metal machine tools and are regarded as one of the seminal buildings of the British Industrial Revolution. They are also the site of the first stationary steam engines used by the Admiralty.

Since 2003 English Heritage has been undertaking a detailed survey of the buildings and the records relating to the machines.

Read more about Portsmouth Block Mills:  Development of Portsmouth Dockyard, Blocks, The Block-making Processes Using The Machines, Significant Features, The Manufacture of The Block-making Machines, Publicity, Later History

Famous quotes containing the words block and/or mills:

    Painting consumes labour not disproportionate to its effect; but a fellow will hack half a year at a block of marble to make something in stone that hardly resembles a man. The value of statuary is owing to its difficulty. You would not value the finest head cut upon a carrot.
    Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)

    Commercial jazz, soap opera, pulp fiction, comic strips, the movies set the images, mannerisms, standards, and aims of the urban masses. In one way or another, everyone is equal before these cultural machines; like technology itself, the mass media are nearly universal in their incidence and appeal. They are a kind of common denominator, a kind of scheme for pre-scheduled, mass emotions.
    —C. Wright Mills (1916–62)