Set of Whitworth distance gauges (end gauges), 1",2",4",8",12" and feeling piece (gravity piece), in wooden case for use with a measuring machine (1871- 4) stored in a case.

Joseph Whitworth had worked for the most eminent machine builders in Britain. Many of the techniques he adopted appear to have originated with Henry Maudslay, but Whitworth’s great contribution was to make accurate tools widely available. By the 1850s he was Britain’s pre-eminent tool-maker. To a contemporary he was 'the most original engineering genius that ever lived’, but also 'a monumental egotist. His fundamental idea was that he had taught the world all that it knew mechanically  and all it could ever know.’

Joseph Whitworth’s gauges were used as standards in his comparators, such as the workshop comparator nearby.