h dem Originale im Besitze des Fuersten von
Waldburg-Wolfegg-Waldsee, im Auftrage des Deutschen Vereins fuer
Kunstwissenschaft, herausgegeben von Helmuth Th. Bossert und Willy F.
Storck_ (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 1912).]

Of at least equal importance with the lead screw and work and their
relationship to each other is the tool-support with its screw-adjusted
cross-slide (fig. 2). Just how this was attached to the frame of the
machine so that it placed the tool at a suitable radius is again a
questionable point. The very well-developed cutting tool is sharpened to
a thin, keen edge totally unsuited for cutting metal but ideal for use
on a softer, fibrous substance: undoubtedly wood, in this instance.
Unfortunately, the angle at which the artist chose to show us this
cutter is not a view from which it is possible to judge whether or not
the tool has been made to conform to the helix angle of the thread to be
cut. This cross-slide, in conjunction with the traversing work spindle,
gives us a machine having two coordinate slides yielding the same effect
as the slide rest usually attributed to Henry Maudslay at the end of the
18th century. Actually, an illustration of coordinate slides independent
of the spindle had been published as early as 1569 by Besson[1] and
knowledge of them widely disseminated by his popular work on mechanics.
These slides are shown as part of a screw-cutting machine with a
questionably adequate connection, by means of cords, between the master
screw and the work.

It was the author's pleasure recently to obtain for the Smithsonian
Institution and identify a small, nicely made, brass instrument which
had been in two collections in this country and one collection in
Germany as an unidentified locksmith's tool (fig. 3). This proved to be
an instrument of the traverse-spindle variety for threading metal.
Fortunately, all essential details were present including a cutter (A in
figure 4); this instrument was identified by the signature "Manuel
Wetschgi, Augspurg." The Wetschgis were a well-known family of gunsmiths
and mechanics in Augsburg through several generations. Two bore the
given name Emanuel: the earlier was born in 1678 and died in 1728. He
was quite celebrated in his field of rifle making and became chief of
artillery to the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel shortly before his death in
his 51st year. Little is known of the later Emanuel Wetschgi except that
he was at Augsburg in 1740. Tentative attribut