The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created The Modern World, Simo Winchester, c. 2018.

The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created The Modern World, Simo Winchester, c. 2018.

June 5, 2025: reading this book for the second time, I had hoped the book would discuss semiconductors and transistors. Not to be.

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Quotes From The Book

Richard Feynman, p. 213: "I think I can safely say that nobody understands quantum mechanics."

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Notes On The Book

Prologue: a very, very long essay on precision and accuracy.

Chapter 1: (Tolerance: 0.1) Stars, Seconds, Cylinders, and Steam

Chapter 2: (Tolerance: 0.0001) Extremely Flat and Incredibly Close

• 1784
• Joseph Bramah, the padlock
• Henry Maudslay, 1771 - 1831: English machine tool innovator; tool and die maker; inventor
• not until 1851 was his padlock controversially picked

Chapter 3: (Tolerance: 0.000 01) A Gun In Every Home, A Clock In Every Cabin

• long, long chapter on guns
• The "War of 1812" was a conflict between the United States and the United Kingdom that lasted from 1812 to 1815. It is sometimes referred to as the "Second War of Independence". The war was fought on land and at sea, with battles occurring in North America, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean. The war ended with the Treaty of Ghent, which restored the pre-war borders and declared an end to the conflict.
• the flintlock
• Thomas Jefferson
• 1784: arrives in France; worked alongside Benjamin Franklin and John Adams; both of these left Paris that July, leaving Jefferson alone in Paris. Franklin back to Washington; John Adams to London.
  
• The Dark Side
•  
  

Chapter 4: (Tolerance: 0.000 000 1) On The Verge of a More Perfect World

• Summer of 1851: The International Exhibition
• Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, Joseph Whitworth (1803 - 1887)
  

• Famous people of the time attended the Great Exhibition, including Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday (who assisted with the planning and judging of exhibits), Samuel Colt, members of the Orléanist royal family and the writers Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson, and William Makepeace Thackeray. The future Arts and Crafts proponent William Morris, then a teenager, later said he refused to attend the Exhibition on the grounds of taste. Exhibits showcased include the first public flush toilets invented by George Jennings.
• Joseph Whitworth;  in 1841, he devised the British Standard Whitworth system, which created an accepted standard for screw threads. Whitworth also created the Whitworth rifle, often called the "sharpshooter" because of its accuracy, which is considered one of the earliest examples of a sniper rifle, used by some Confederate forces during the American Civil war.

Chapter 5: (Tolerance: 0.000 000 000 1) The Irresistible Lure of the Highway

• Henry Royce: made the cars
• Charles Rolls: marketer, sold the cars; flamboyant
• Henry Ford

Chapter 6: (Tolerance: 0.000 000 000 001) Precision and Peril, Six Miles High

The jet engine, the turbine.

Chapter 7: (Tolerance: 0.000 000 000 000 1) Through a Glass, Distinctly

Lenses; the Hubble telescope.

Chapter 8: (Tolerance: 0.000 000 000 000 000 01) Where Am I, And What Is The Time?

GPS.

Chapter 9: (Tolerance: 0.000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 000 01) Squeezing Beyond Boundaries.

A machine that makes machines. ASML.

Chapter 10: On the Necessity for Equipoise

Equipoise: a state of balance or equilibrium.

A word that piques my interest, and, as such, is similar to ennui. 

Along with penultimate.

Craft.

Afterword: The Measure of All Things

Bibliograpy

Glossary

Index