[niteowl77]

Lathes are fundamental to modern science and industry. Every last thing in modern tech starts from that. You can trace European (and later global) "economic takeoff" to this thing.

I still have an old copy of L.T.C. Rolt's "Short History of Machine Tools" that does a pretty good job of showing the progression of lathes as they became "the machine tool that made all other machine tools possible" (it is, like many of Rolt's books, quite readable by those of us who don't possess engineering backgrounds).

Two big bugbears of the time were the accuracy of machined threads, and truly accurate end measurement. Rolt discusses these matters in his book, as does George Eschol Sellers in his collection of engineering reminiscences.

[buwaya]

“L.T.C. Rolt’s “Short History of Machine Tools””

Thanks for the suggestion!

[telescope115]

Maybe this is slightly off subject, but in all of this we must not forget the the standardization of weights and measures.

[buwaya]

My previous career was metrology. I was a metrology consultant. Our tech of the time, just coming in then, were these things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZaWx8-oetQ