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smitchy 's review for:
Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World
by Simon Winchester
Precision is something that is so integral to our lives it is almost impossible to imagine what life was like without it. Precision has given us the ability to replicate an object infinitely, and with this ability came the foundations of the production line and the industrial revolution.
We drive around in cars that are made to be exactly the same as every other car of the same model. We walk in shoes of a certain size and when we need another pair we can just ask for that size with the reasonable certainty they will fit. We go to the hardware store for screws or nails and know that each will be of the same dimensions as the others in the packet. All of this is possible because of the skills and imaginations of numerous engineers over the last few centuries - each has pushed to make their cannon, clock, gun, engine or screw better than what went before.
Better equals easier to use, easier to fix, parts that are made exactly so that they can be interchanged. Better equals precision.
Simon Winchester's fascination with precision started with the tools his father would bring home from work and you can see that early fascination coming out in the detail of this book. We get both the mechanical and human stories of the men (and it is mostly men) and their machines who have changed the world into a more precise place.
Told chronologically and picking out the most significant and original advancements Winchester builds a picture of what precision has meant over time and the reason it is so integral to our lives today. The way this story is told and the minutia of detail means this book will definitely appeal to the more mechanically minded - I'm going to give this to my dad as I'm sure he's going to love it.
We drive around in cars that are made to be exactly the same as every other car of the same model. We walk in shoes of a certain size and when we need another pair we can just ask for that size with the reasonable certainty they will fit. We go to the hardware store for screws or nails and know that each will be of the same dimensions as the others in the packet. All of this is possible because of the skills and imaginations of numerous engineers over the last few centuries - each has pushed to make their cannon, clock, gun, engine or screw better than what went before.
Better equals easier to use, easier to fix, parts that are made exactly so that they can be interchanged. Better equals precision.
Simon Winchester's fascination with precision started with the tools his father would bring home from work and you can see that early fascination coming out in the detail of this book. We get both the mechanical and human stories of the men (and it is mostly men) and their machines who have changed the world into a more precise place.
Told chronologically and picking out the most significant and original advancements Winchester builds a picture of what precision has meant over time and the reason it is so integral to our lives today. The way this story is told and the minutia of detail means this book will definitely appeal to the more mechanically minded - I'm going to give this to my dad as I'm sure he's going to love it.