The Whitworth planing machine cuts flat surfaces in metal components. It was a significant improvement over previous designs, offering greater precision and ease of operation. Accurately flat surfaces were essential for a wide range of engineering products; machines like this were used in the construction of steam engines, textile spinning equipment and to make other machine tools.

This power-driven planing machine drives a cutting tool over the workpiece, removing a small amount of metal in a straight line. It then steps the cutter to one side, machining overlapping cuts until the entire surface has been covered.

Joseph Whitworth had worked in turn for Henry Maudslay, Charles Holtzapffel and Joseph Clement - all celebrated machine builders. He then set up alone and became the pre-eminent toolmaker in Britain. A perfectionist, he was famous for his insistence on precision, standardisation and quality of workmanship. His contemporaries credited him with the 'application of logical method and science' to industrial affairs.

Some later commentators have raised the question of whether the ideas which Whitworth claimed as his own were in fact his or were acquired from his celebrated teachers. Whatever the answer, the scale of Whitworth's achievements was enormous. He was one of the first to produce a wide range of tools suitable for all types of manufacturing and by the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, his firm had become a world leader in the field of machine tools.

Inv. 1908-20