Early Life
Roberts was born at Llanymynech, on the border between England and Wales. He was the son of William Roberts, a shoemaker, who also kept the New Bridge tollgate. Roberts was educated by the parish priest, and early found employment with a boatman on the Ellesmere Canal and later at the local limestone quarries. He received some instruction in drawing from Robert Bough, a road surveyor, who was working under Thomas Telford.
Roberts then found employment as a patternmaker at Bradley Iron works, Staffordshire, and, probably in 1813, moved to a supervisory position in the pattern shop of the Horsely Iron works, Tipton. He had gained skills in turning, wheel-wrighting and the repair of mill work. He was drawn for the militia and to avoid this made for Liverpool, but finding no work there shifted to Manchester, where he found work as a turner for a cabinet-maker. He then moved to Salford working at lathe- and tool-making. Because the militia was still seeking him, he walked to London, where he found employment with Henry Maudslay as a fitter and turner.
At Maudslays he absorbed his master's philosophy of "the importance of accurate machine tools where hand work was replaced by mechanisms".
By 1816, when defeat of Napoleon had removed the threat of the militia, it was safe for him to return north, he had set up at Manchester as a "turner of plain and eccentric work at No 15 Deans Gate". The lathe was upstairs in a bedroom driven by a big wheel in the basement turned by his wife. Nothing is known of her origins or even name. Roberts soon moved into New Market Buildings at Pool Fold, and was described as a "Lathe and Tool Maker".
Read more about this topic: Richard Roberts (engineer)
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