Joshua Field FRS (1786 – 11 August 1863) was a British civil engineer and mechanical engineer. Field was born in Hackney in 1786, his father was John Field a corn and seed merchant who was later to become Master of the Worshipful Company of Merchant Taylors. Field was a pupil of dockyard engineer Simon Goodrich from 1803 to 1805. Commissioned by Samuel Bentham, the Inspector-general of naval works, he worked with Samuel Goodrich to develop tools for mass-producing ships' blocks at Portsmouth Dockyard. The block mills they designed required ten unskilled men to take the place of 110 skilled craftsmen, and have been recognised as the first use of machine tools for mass production. They were built by Henry Maudslay between 1802 and 1806, and represented the first steam-powered manufactory in