POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Drawing of St Petersburg Mint showing Boulton & Watt engine

Drawing of St Petersburg Mint showing Boulton & Watt engine

Object No. 87/646

This excellent example of architectural and technical drawing has an interesting place in the history of technology. Although it represents a proposal for a mint in St Petersburg that did not eventuate, a crucial change in the brief that led to this situation also led to the gelling of an important idea in the mind of industrialist Matthew Boulton: the rational production line. Born in 1728, Boulton inherited a modest button-making business and built an empire that included Soho Manufactory, Soho Mint and Soho Foundry, all in his native Birmingham. He is best known for his steam engine partnership with James Watt; their engines were much more efficient than earlier ones, and they developed the first successful rotative engines for turning machinery in factories. Boulton lobbied the British government to reform its coinage. Having designed new machines for striking coins and made many coins and medals at his steam-powered Soho Mint, he sold complete mints to the British and foreign governments. The first of his overseas mints was the one in St Petersburg. This project met with many problems. In February 1797, after Boulton learned that the contract had been suspended, he wrote about how he planned to arrange the workflow if the contract was re-instated: 'every kind of work and every department should be kept separate from each other and the people employed not be permitted to enter into each others apartments, but the pieces pass through tubes [from apartment to apartment].' (Doty p.83) This was a radical departure from old craft-based methods of production, in which (for example) unskilled workers carried baskets of coin blanks to skilled workers for stamping in hand-operated presses. The plan represented in the drawing involved one engine driving the silver coining machinery and another driving presses for making copper and gold coins. The crucial change in the St Petersburg brief was the requirement to separate the coining of copper, silver and gold. This required Boulton to re-think the layout, which was based on presses arranged in a circle. One of his engineers, John Southern, came up with a technical idea that allowed a departure from this arrangement, and Boulton refined his 'apartments and tubes' concept to create a linear arrangement of operations for the St Petersburg Mint, and later for other mints. Thus while working through problems on the project represented by this drawing, Matthew Boulton became the first person to write down the principles of the production line. These were: to place each process in a separate apartment; to prevent workers from moving between apartments; to weigh material in each apartment before passing it on through a hole in the wall; to arrange the apartments so that material passes only in one direction; and to do this all on one floor. (Doty p.88) Reference Doty R , 'The Soho Mint and the Industrialization of Money', Smithsonian Institution, 1998, pages 74-123. Debbie Rudder, Curator, May 2009

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Summary

Object Statement

Drawing, of the Imperial Bank Mint at St Petersburg, with a Boulton and Watt steam engine and machinery for making silver coins, paper, designed by Alexey Nikolaevich Olenin / Baboshin, drawn by Smyth, St Petersburg, Russia, 1796-1798

Physical Description

A pen and wash drawing of a Boulton and Watt steam engine and machinery for making silver coins. The drawing is an elevation showing cross sections of the building and of the boiler and engine within it. It also shows four men, one alone and the others in a group. The boiler is of the haystack type, with a fire below and water inside. A water delivery pipe and valve are shown, as is a pipe for conveying steam to the engine.The piston is shown inside the engine's cylinder, and the separate condenser and air pump are also shown in section. The engine has a parallel motion mechanism connecting the piston rod and beam, a timber beam, timber connecting rod, and sun and planet gears. The drive wheel is shown in front of the flywheel, and a bevel gear engaging with the drive wheel sits in front of it, driving a machine that has a crank and flywheel. Also in front of the engine, and driven via a wheel that appears to sit behind the drive wheel, is a mill for rolling metal to the thickness required for coinage. Other machinery is visible behind the engine. The title of the drawing is written in the top right corner. There is also Russian text at top left. This is probably the title repeated in Russian. Additional text can be seen in the bottom right and in Russian in the bottom left. At the bottom centre of the drawing is written 'two 10th of an inch per foot', which indicates that the scale is 1:60. All writing is in script. The letter A in red appears at either side of the drawing. The same letters would also have appeared on a plan of the building, with a line between them to show where this section is located. The letters R and I also appear on the drawing. Indeed, a plan of the proposed mint labelled with these letters does exist, and it is reproduced on page 84 of Richard Doty's book, 'The Soho Mint and the Industrialization of Money' (Smithsonian Institution, 1998). The paper is watermarked.

DIMENSIONS

Height

543 mm

Width

702 mm

PRODUCTION

Notes

The drawing was 'delineated' by Alexey Nikolaevich Olenin, who was in charge of the St Petersburg Mint from 1797, and 'drawn' by the architect Baboshin in Russia between approximately 1796 and 1798. This drawing was part of a proposal which required two steam engines, a smaller one for powering machines to make silver coins, and a larger one for making gold and copper coins. The drawing shows the smaller engine. This proposal for the St Petersburg Mint was cancelled by the Russian government, but Matthew Boulton later supplied engines and coining machinery for the mint that was built there.

HISTORY

Notes

The Museum purchased the drawing at auction in London in 1987. The Christie's auction catalogue stated that the provenance was 'by descent from Matthew Robinson Boulton and Matthew Piers Boulton to the late Major Eustace Robb.' The drawing was passed down to Matthew Boulton's descendants amongst other papers held at the Great Tew estate. This property was purchased by Matthew Boulton's son, Matthew Robinson Boulton, in 1815. On the death of his son, Matthew Piers Watt Boulton, it passed to the latter's son and Matthew Boulton's great-grandson, Matthew Ernest Boulton, who died in WW1 and left no children. From 1962 it was owned by Matthew Boulton's great-great-grandson (and grandson of Matthew Robinson Boulton's daughter, Mary Ann), Major Eustace Robb. When Robb died in 1985 the property and contents passed to his estate agent, James Johnston, who sold many of the contents to pay death duties.

SOURCE

Credit Line

Purchased with funds donated by the Patrons of the Powerhouse, 1987

Acquisition Date

1 June 1987

Copyright for the above image is held by the Powerhouse and may be subject to third-party copyright restrictions. Please submit an Image Licensing Enquiry for information regarding reproduction, copyright and fees. Text is released under Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivative licence.

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