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:
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—Quentin Crisp (b. 1908)
“You haf slafed your life away in de bosses’ mills and your fadhers before you and your kids after you yet. Vat is a man to do with seventeen-fifty a week? His wife must work nights to make another ten, must vork nights and cook and wash in day an’ vatfor? So that the bosses can get rich an’ the stockholders and bondholders. It is too much... ve stood it before because ve vere not organized. Now we have union... We must all stand together for union.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)