Short answers, pulled from the story.
Henry Maudslay invented the first industrially practical screw-cutting lathe in 1800, enabling standardised screw thread sizes for the first time. Standardised threads made interchangeable parts possible, which was a prerequisite for mass production and a key development in the Industrial Revolution. He also invented a bench micrometer accurate to one ten-thousandth of an inch, which he called the "Lord Chancellor".
Maudslay began work at age twelve as a powder monkey at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, before moving through its carpenter's shop and blacksmith's forge. He then worked for inventor Joseph Bramah at his workshop in Denmark Street, St Giles, where he became workshop manager at nineteen and worked for eight years before leaving in 1797.
The Bramah lock was a patented tumbler-principle lock designed by Joseph Bramah. Maudslay built the lock displayed in Bramah's shop window with a notice offering 200 guineas to anyone who could pick it; it resisted all attempts for 47 years. Maudslay also designed the special tools and machines that made the lock economical to manufacture.
Richard Roberts, David Napier, Joseph Clement, Joseph Whitworth, James Nasmyth (inventor of the steam hammer), and Joshua Field all trained in Maudslay's workshop. Field later became Maudslay's business partner, and the firm traded as Maudslay, Sons and Field.
The Portsmouth Block Mills were a purpose-built factory where Maudslay installed 42 woodworking machines to produce wooden rigging blocks for the Royal Navy under the direction of Sir Marc Isambard Brunel. The machines could produce 130,000 blocks a year using only ten unskilled workers, replacing a workforce of 110 skilled craftsmen. The mills still survive, along with some of the original machinery.
Henry Maudslay died on the 14th of February 1831. In January 1831 he caught a chill while crossing the English Channel after visiting a friend in France, was ill for four weeks, and died as a result. He was buried at St Mary Magdalen Woolwich, where he had also designed the memorial in its Lady Chapel.