Exactly How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
Exactly How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World by Simon Winchester, published by HarperCollins Publishers Limited on May 2, 2019, is a comprehensive exploration of the engineers who shaped modern precision machinery. This 416-page book delves into the significance of precision in our daily lives, examining how it has become an essential aspect of our social, scientific, and technological landscapes. Winchester addresses the origins of precision engineering, tracing its development from the Industrial Age in Britain to contemporary advancements across the globe.
Readers will find a detailed narrative that introduces key figures such as John ‘Iron-Mad’ Wilkinson and Henry Maudslay, whose innovations laid the groundwork for modern manufacturing. The book raises fundamental questions about the nature of precision, the tools used to measure it, and its impact on craftsmanship and culture. Winchester’s work invites reflection on the balance between precision and the appreciation of traditional methods, making it a thought-provoking read for those interested in the intersections of technology, engineering, and history.
Official synopsis Publisher
SHORTLISTED FOR THE ROYAL SOCIETY SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE 2018
Bestselling author Simon Winchester writes a magnificent history of the pioneering engineers who developed precision machinery to allow us to see as far as the moon and as close as the Higgs boson.
Precision is the key to everything. It is an integral, unchallenged and essential component of our modern social, mercantile, scientific, mechanical and intellectual landscapes. The items we value in our daily lives – a camera, phone, computer, bicycle, car, a dishwasher perhaps – all sport components that fit together with precision and operate with near perfection. We also assume that the more precise a device the better it is. And yet whilst we live lives peppered and larded with precision, we are not, when we come to think about it, entirely sure what precision is, or what it means. How and when did it begin to build the modern world?
Simon Winchester seeks to answer these questions through stories of precision’s pioneers. Exactly takes us back to the origins of the Industrial Age, to Britain where he introduces the scientific minds that helped usher in modern production: John ‘Iron-Mad’ Wilkinson, Henry Maudslay, Joseph Bramah, Jesse Ramsden, and Joseph Whitworth. Thomas Jefferson exported their discoveries to the United States as manufacturing developed in the early twentieth century, with Britain’s Henry Royce developing the Rolls Royce and Henry Ford mass producing cars, Hattori’s Seiko and Leica lenses, to today’s cutting-edge developments from Europe, Asia and North America.
As he introduces the minds and methods that have changed the modern world, Winchester explores fundamental questions. Why is precision important? What are the different tools we use to measure it? Who has invented and perfected it? Has the pursuit of the ultra-precise in so many facets of human life blinded us to other things of equal value, such as an appreciation for the age-old traditions of craftsmanship, art, and high culture? Are we missing something that reflects the world as it is, rather than the world as we think we would wish it to be? And can the precise and the natural co-exist in society?
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