Inventions & Discoveries · Tools and materials

Lathe

6th century BCE · 6th century BCE

A lathe is a machine tool that turns a workpiece about an axis while tools cut, sand, drill or shape it into a form symmetrical about that axis. Clear evidence of turning comes from the 6th century BCE: fragments of a wooden bowl in an Etruscan tomb in northern Italy and two wooden dishes with turned rims from present-day Turkey. A painting in the tomb of Petosiris in 4th-century BCE Egypt is the first known picture of a lathe, and in China rotary lathes sharpened tools and weapons by about 400 BCE. Andrey Nartov built a lathe with a tool-carrying carriage and gears in 1718, and by the 1770s precision lathes with a slide-rest had become practical.

Lathe
Image: Glenn McKechnie · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons

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First known
6th century BCE
Where
Etruscan tomb, northern Italy
Credited to
Etruscans

Also arose independentlyChina (c. 400 BCE)

NoteTenuous evidence of a turned artifact at a Mycenaean Greek site may go back to the 13th or 14th century BCE.

Built onPotter's wheelc. 4500 BCE

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Mentioned in 1 profile

Terracotta Armyreception

See also

Cite this entry
APA
The Epoch Institute. (2026). Lathe. In The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/lathe
MLA
“Lathe.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia, The Epoch Institute, 2026, https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/lathe. Accessed .
Chicago
The Epoch Institute. “Lathe.” The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. 2026. https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/lathe.
Harvard
The Epoch Institute (2026) ‘Lathe’, The Epoch Institute Encyclopedia. Available at: https://the-epoch-institute.org/encyclopedia/lathe (Accessed: ).

Last reviewed October 2026Random entry ↻