Abstract
IN the possession of the Science Museum, London, there are six beautifully engraved buttons, classified as diffraction gratings, which are still regarded as masterpieces. They were the work of Sir John Barton, deputy comptroller of the Royal Mint in the early part of the nineteenth century, about whom little is known personally, but who must have been an ingenious inventor and capable engineer, for in 1806 he invented a differential screw measuring instrument capable of measuring to 10-5 inch. In 1822 he was granted a patent for his engraved buttons. After Sir John‘s death the ruling engine on which the buttons had been ruled passed into the possession of his grandson and then to his great-grandson, Mr. R. V. Barton, who, in 1925, presented the engine, together with some handwritten notes of his father‘s concerning the working of the machine, to the Science Museum. The above details are given in a valuable and interesting illustrated article entitled "A Ruling Engine Used by Sir John Barton— and its Products"which P. Grodzinski, the technical editor of the Industrial Diamond Review, contributes to the February number of that journal. It would appear that this is the first authoritative description.
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Barton‘s Ruling Engine. Nature 162, 446 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162446b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162446b0