If you're interested in the historical aspects of machining, and how the trade influenced culture and entire nations, Simon Winchester's book The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World, is a good read. It was a New York Times bestseller, and details how, until such time as precision machining was invented, one-off inventions were the norm and really limited in their impact until tools such as lathes, cross slides, boring machines, surface plates and gauge blocks were invented. Precision was invented for warfare and firearms, yet taken to the extreme it can become the Achilles Heal of successful campaigns.
Most of us have heard of James Watt and how his steam machine started the industrial revolution. But in reality his invention was just a novelty, incapable of doing any real work due to 0.5" gaps between the cylinder and the cylinder walls. That is until someone else came along and solved the leakage issue with a boring machine accurate to a few thousands of an inch—a boring machine that was originally intended to make more accurate canons for naval ships.
What I really enjoyed about this book was how too much precision—as in the cases of Rolls Royce jet engines or the Hubble Space Telescope—can actually introduce unintended failure into engineering and lead to life threatening scenarios, or skyrocketing costs.
As the book progresses it moves into finer and finer levels of precision. So by about the 2/3 mark the author is discussing watches, optics and electronics down to the microscopic level. It's all very interesting, although I enjoyed the first half about machine tools more than the latter half. It wraps up with a discussion of the metric system and how its units were eventually agreed upon amongst nations.
I especially love books that discuss the cultural impact of machinery and inventions, and this has a lot of that. I almost wish it were a longer read, but I suppose this topic could go on forever if left unchecked.
It's available in ebook, paperback and on Audible.
Most of us have heard of James Watt and how his steam machine started the industrial revolution. But in reality his invention was just a novelty, incapable of doing any real work due to 0.5" gaps between the cylinder and the cylinder walls. That is until someone else came along and solved the leakage issue with a boring machine accurate to a few thousands of an inch—a boring machine that was originally intended to make more accurate canons for naval ships.
What I really enjoyed about this book was how too much precision—as in the cases of Rolls Royce jet engines or the Hubble Space Telescope—can actually introduce unintended failure into engineering and lead to life threatening scenarios, or skyrocketing costs.
As the book progresses it moves into finer and finer levels of precision. So by about the 2/3 mark the author is discussing watches, optics and electronics down to the microscopic level. It's all very interesting, although I enjoyed the first half about machine tools more than the latter half. It wraps up with a discussion of the metric system and how its units were eventually agreed upon amongst nations.
I especially love books that discuss the cultural impact of machinery and inventions, and this has a lot of that. I almost wish it were a longer read, but I suppose this topic could go on forever if left unchecked.
It's available in ebook, paperback and on Audible.
Good for you. It was a good read.
