Take a photo of a barcode or cover
143 reviews for:
EXACTLY: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
Simon Winchester, Simon Winchester
4.04 AVERAGE
143 reviews for:
EXACTLY: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
Simon Winchester, Simon Winchester
4.04 AVERAGE
This was an exceptional book that explains the importance of precision in technological advances. I read it months ago, and remember enjoying how it is organized: the technology described in each chapter requires more precision than the one in the previous chapter.
A fascinating book, beautifully written by Winchester. It gives us a chronology of how ideas about precision changed the world and impacts society. Each chapter, precision becomes more and more precise, and he ties it together in the last third of the book. The book isn’t too long and much of the movement of the book was based on his fascination with all things precise.
informative
lighthearted
relaxing
medium-paced
Like most of Winchester’s work this is a good jumping off point for further research. His writing style is enjoyable if a little dry and his structure is well thought out.
This book makes me want to read everything Simon Winchester has ever written.
The popular image of the industrial revolution is of titanic forces unleashed by steam, of dark satanic mills and choking clouds of smog. But the machines did not spring into being, fully formed. Behind our modern age lies an obsession with precision, with exactitude in measurement and cutting that a medieval master craftsman would find extremely odd, and which we find extremely normal.
Winchester chronicles 250 years of precision engineering, starting with John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson, a cannon manufacturer who armed the fleets that won Britain 100 years of empire, and who's technology, adopted in partnership with James Watt, created the first useful steam engine. Wilkinson's bores erred by no more than 1/10th of an inch, and in a few generations this would seem to be incredibly imprecise, as various engineers chased ever finer exactitude in manufacturing and measurement in the service of more reliable machines, economies of mass production, and eventually the atomic level precision of computer chips, GPS satellites, and LIGO, the gravity wave detecting observatory.
Winchester blends a love of precision equipment, such as Rolls-Royce cars, his father's Jo blocks, mechanical watches, and Leica camera lenses, with an a charming professionalism as a writer, leaping through centuries, biographical sketches, and ever finer tolerances. This is as good as popular history of technology gets!
Winchester chronicles 250 years of precision engineering, starting with John "Iron-Mad" Wilkinson, a cannon manufacturer who armed the fleets that won Britain 100 years of empire, and who's technology, adopted in partnership with James Watt, created the first useful steam engine. Wilkinson's bores erred by no more than 1/10th of an inch, and in a few generations this would seem to be incredibly imprecise, as various engineers chased ever finer exactitude in manufacturing and measurement in the service of more reliable machines, economies of mass production, and eventually the atomic level precision of computer chips, GPS satellites, and LIGO, the gravity wave detecting observatory.
Winchester blends a love of precision equipment, such as Rolls-Royce cars, his father's Jo blocks, mechanical watches, and Leica camera lenses, with an a charming professionalism as a writer, leaping through centuries, biographical sketches, and ever finer tolerances. This is as good as popular history of technology gets!
informative
lighthearted
slow-paced
informative
medium-paced
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
Lots of known facts gathered in a book that, despite a good narrative, is somewhat boring.
Too bad as the topic was enticing.
Too bad as the topic was enticing.