textiles machines, Roberts took as partners Thomas Sharp, an iron merchant, and his brother John Sharp, Robert Chapman, Thomas Jones Wilkinson and James Hill. They formed two firms, Sharp Hill & Co and Roberts, Hills & Co, and in May 1826 these were amalgamated to form Sharp, Roberts & Co. The firm later became well known for making locomotives. In 1834 Charles Beyer joined the firm and contributed to its success in locomotive building as Roberts soon delegated most of the locomotive design work to Beyer. Roberts was a prolific inventor and manufacturer, ranging over turret clock-making, to road vehicles, to iron ship building, to a punching machine, operating on the same system as the Jacquard loom, for punching the rivet holes in the iron plates making up the railway bridge over the river Conwy in North Wales. His Alpha turret clock won a prize medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He was not a particularly successful businessman, and Sharp, Roberts & Co. closed in June 1852 (by which time the more successful Sharp, Stewart and Company were formed). Death and legacy Roberts continued as a consulting engineer and inventor until his death, taking out 18 patents. In 1860, aged 71 he moved to London, where he became financially distressed. Various friends, almost all engineers, raised a fund to help him, but he died in his daughter's arms in London on 11 March 1864 aged 74. He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London. His daughter later received a civil list pension in recognition of her father's achievements. He has been described as the most important British mechanical engineer of the 19th century. According to biographer Richard Leslie Hills, his main contribution was the introduction of improved machine tools without which high standards of accuracy could not be achieved. This laid the foundation of production engineering as we know it today, leading to the interchangeability of standard parts and mass production. The Roberts mechanism, a linkage for generating approximate straight-line movement, is named after him. Notes References . Reprinted by McGraw-Hill, New York and London, 1926 (); and by Lindsay Publications, Inc., Bradley, Illinois, (). British mechanical engineers English inventors Machine tool builders Patternmakers (industrial) 1789 births 1864 deaths Burials at Kensal Green Cemetery History of Greater Manchester People of the Industrial Revolution Industrial Revolution in England 18th-century British engineers