"But efficiency was not uppermost in Besson's mind, for his machines were not intended for industrial workers but for hobbyists.

Turning had become the gentleman's equivalent of needlepoint and remained in vogue as a pastime until the end of the eighteenth century. "It is an established fact that in present-day Europe this art is the most serious occupation of intelligence and merit," wrote fr. Charles Plumier, who published the first treatise on the lathe, L'art de tourner, in 1701 "and, between amusements and reasonable pleasures, the one most highly regarded by those who seek in some honest exercise the means of avoiding those faults caused by excessive idleness"