https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35068671-the-perfectioni...
I used to use a lot of vintage German cameras. Really right up through the 1950s the tolerances were wide enough that no two cameras were exactly alike. The parts were all replaceable, and there were often adjustments & shims inside to keep things in spec. For example, one camera might have part A that's a little long so it's matching part B would be a little short to compensate. They'd sort it out at the factory where they have the parts bins and could keep trying different part Bs to match the part A installed until they had a close enough match, then shim it.
This was even more so in the 1920s-1940s cameras.
The cameras actually had stickers in the film compartment warning you to send it in for professional service for any repairs. Note the implication that the camera needed frequent enough service that they'd actually bother putting a sticker in it!
So for some we look back on the era as things being user-serviceable and parts replaceable, but it was that way for reasons of manufacturing ability.
I think you're underestimating it also. For example, micrometres capable of measuring imperceptible differences have existed for many centuries, same for manufacturing machines (lathes, mills) that can shape objects to imperceptible requirements.
Cameras probably just don't require such precision.
Depends on the camera.
I think if we combine both of your comments, we get a more clear picture of reality: we've had the ability to manufacture one instance of something with precision for a while, but not the ability to do so consistently, reliably, or quickly.
i.e. tolerances have shrunk dramatically over the past century or so, along with time needed to produce things with such low tolerances.
However, while that is generally true across the board, tolerances haven't all gotten to the same place! Materials involved, costs, time to build, and need for low tolerances still largely affect all of it, of course.
And for some things, individual variations are even considered desirable.
I recall some lenses from the era having their actual exact focal length inscribed inside since they weren’t exactly 50mm and the variance was 0.2mm or so.
Don’t even get me started on Soviet cameras.
Point of the story, the lens had some shims to get into the proper focal plane relative to the camera. The model in question doesn't have the best sharpness reputation, some people put it on the worst 10 list of Nikon lenses. The sample I had is sharp so (VR didn't engage until 28 mm). My theory now is tgat the lens is sharp, and the bad rep comes from compromises during manufacturing (Thailand instead of Japan, with all the corresponding issues of setting up high precision operations in a new site), and potentially sub-par QC. Not sure if other lenses have shims as well, I'm kind of not inclined to disassemble perfectly working samples just to find out.
So no, shims aren't per-se a bad sign but rather one of a certain calibration strategy. If those shims are everywere so, manufavturing quality propably isn't the best.
Oh, one word on 50 mm lenses. Those are among the fastes, sharpest lenses ever regardless of manufacturer. And dirt cheap compared to "pro" models. Seems to be quite well understood optics.
I do have two pre-AF Nikon lenses, and those are master pieces of precision mechanics, dating back to the late 70s and early 80s.
Humans are capable of detecting extremely small details with their fingertips[1] anecdotally, this can be trained if you use your finger tips for precision work a lot, you can easily feel things that you can't see without significant magnification.
Additionally, I would push back on "many centuries", the Machine age came about in the mid 19th century, so if were being generous, 300 years[2].
[1] https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/09/130916110853.h...
[2] https://archive.org/details/englishandameri01roegoog/page/n2...
[2] is cited on the wikipedia page for micrometer. Cool book though, might read it.
I had a 1998 Corvette...designed in the early 90's with CADCAM. No shims. Things like a door latch and door made by entirely different companies, the three holes to attach the latch weren't shimmed or slotted, and the replacement fit exactly with no adjustment.
Anyone who has looked in the engine bay of a car from 50s/80s/00s/now can observe how tightly packed & compartmentalized everything is now. Early cars had a lot of room under the hood cuz mechanics were constantly in there tinkering, adjusting or replacing bits and pieces. It's incredible how long a car from a reliable brand lasts now, with minimal maintenance.
EVs are another step function in this change as theres even fewer mechanical moving parts and fluid lines to worry about.
This has nothing to do with computers. Detroit just didn’t care about building decent cars back then. Mercedes and many others were able to build very nicely designed cars long before CAD/CAM was available.
Recently I dug teeny bit into pocket watches, and then wrist watches, which turnst out were a thing way longer than I imagined!
Weren't these handcrafted by highly skilled and highly paid specialists for a long, long time. In contrast to more modern mass production.
* We were able to craft, manually, things much more precisely for much longer than some of us thought
* We were able to design/engineer/mass-manufacture precise things for far shorter than many of us thought
Which is probably a good reason the early steam engines didn't take off. You could build something in the lab, but there was no way to affordably mass produce a usefully efficient version.
Having this sticker on my device doesn't make me think that I need to send it in often, it's more that they're covering their ass.
The rest of your comment I'd agree with but a lot of things were designed around needing tight tolerances and using tight tolerances when you don't need them is not always a good idea. My earbuds won't charge if there's the tiniest bit of dust in the little recesses the charging pins go into or in the bottom of the well. Lower precision there would make them more reliable.
Let's hope that in the future software engineering becomes mature enough that we don't need daily security updates.
"I had a problem so I thought I'll use Java - now I have a ProblemFactory"
My argument was that Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy (one of the canonical works of precision engineering literature) was published in the early 1900's, but no, it was actually in 1970. (https://pearl-hifi.com/06_Lit_Archive/15_Mfrs_Publications/M...)
Can't believe that I was that far off! I might have been thinking of Precision Hole Location, but even that wasn't published until the 1940's.
That was in 80s.
https://twitter.com/aeroimageschris/status/11524425725533265...
https://www.airliners.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1427119
edit - “Mad Dad” - that’s either a great typo or great use of alliteration.
He machined all parts on his Emco Unimat II, a 70's hobbyist convertible lathe. The final piece was beautiful.
Ultimately the kettle couldn't build up enough steam because of tolerances of parts.
He machined the resp. parts from scratch with more rigor. A year later, the 2nd version moved half a meter before it stopped for the same reasons.
I remember his swearing and disappointment. But then he explained calmly to my cousin and me why he couldn't do any better w/o an investment into heavier, more precise and much more expensive tools. Too expensive for a hobbyist.
Go figure.
You bore thecylinder to rough dimension, then use the reamer to set it to final tolerance.
You see them in literally every modern engine and I'm sure absurdly far back, even though they have better precision now.
Your 1966 south bend is likely several orders of magnitude better than that emco, those things are more meant for wood, and imagine if you needed to align your spindle on your lathe every time you used it how inaccurate it'd be.
As part of the foundations for rapid technological advancement, standard weights and lengths were put into place by the crown... and that then allowed the foundries and factories which made the parts to specialize instead of needing a master gunsmith to craft each part for each gun, you could have many lightly trained people making the parts and then the gunsmiths only needed to assemble it.
At a point later in the series, one of the characters on the other side of the war demonstrates this by taking three rifles and disassembles them, and then reassembles a working rifle with parts randomly selected from the different three disassembled rifles and asks his leadership if that was something that they would be able to do (it wasn't).
This in turn allowed for tighter tolerances for the weapons of war which then in turn meant more powerful weapons and being able to out produce larger nations even with a smaller industrial base.
Consider the question then of "at what point in the history of the world could you take three rifles made by the same maker and swap parts and still have it be perfectly serviceable?"
Early steam engines for work (not train) The Newcomen Engine in the 1700s (though fairly inefficient - and you can see that it could be made without precision parts). By 1800 (when Watt's patent expired) there was an estimated 450 Watt engines (totaling 7,500 hp) and over 1500 Newcomen engines in the UK.
The first high pressure steam engine was built by Oliver Evans in 1801 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_Evans#Developing_the_hi...
By the 1830s, you had this - https://youtu.be/zoBWAE0win0
Based on the real history of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interchangeable_parts :-
By around 1778, Honoré Blanc began producing some of the first firearms with interchangeable flint locks, although they were carefully made by craftsmen. Blanc demonstrated in front of a committee of scientists that his muskets could be fitted with flint locks picked at random from a pile of parts.
The development of interchangeable parts, precision parts, higher performing weapons (which often is a driver of innovation) and the steam engine have more than casual linkages between them.
It depends on the weapon.
To this day, there are many designs that require "fitting" for some parts. The M1911, a .45 ACP semi-automatic handgun that entered US service in 1911 and is still a relatively popular, doesn't have truly interchangeable parts. The interface between the sear and hammer, or the trigger bar and sear, must be manually carefully shaped for feel, safety, and reliability. The "ramp" that guides the cartridge into the chamber is similar, and it's common to get new guns that won't reliably work with common brands or designs of ammunition.
But the build up to creating the universe, the prelude, and then all the historical engineering details were so good I didn't mind skipping over all the attempts at having characters after the initial scene was set.
One of the often-overlooked prerequisites for Watt's improvement of the steam engine through the use of an external condenser was the need for a precision cylinder. Then-recent advances in boring machinery for making cannons provided the means, but cannons had been around for centuries before this development came about. Furthermore, while this improvement depended on an advance in precision engineering, Newcomen's steam engine was already eighty years old.
The industrial revolution and its successors depended on the mutually-supporting bootstrapping of several disparate facets of technology, all of which could possibly have started earlier, so it seems unlikely that the timing of the initial spark can be attributed to an until-then absence of just one of them.
The fun thing with lathes is they are able to make things more precise than they are, power of screws really. So they're a bootstrap technology.
The contention you are making is that between 1640 and 1690 the standardization of units of measurement and the invention of the lathe meant that Kalthoff (say) could not produce a viable steam engine in the 1640s, but Savery could successfully produce one in the 1690s.
I suspect this thesis is false, but I wanted to state it here before I did any research into it.
Hard to say about the lathe; as the article notes, Wilkinson's work in cannon boring machines certainly made James Watt's life easier, but that was still way in the future (circa 1774) so there doesn't appear to be anything relevant to the timeframe the article is discussing.
Not that the rebuttal is conclusive; I tend to think that you are closer to being correct than the author's conclusion (which is that the inventors themselves are rare). But I think you would need to specifically address the argument in the article rather than claiming that the article failed to consider this point.
Example video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gNRnrn5DE58
I think it's fair to call these mini-documentaries.
It's amazing how many details needed culminate into what now seems a relatively obvious technology.
These days it's Babbage's poor project management that's cited as the cause. He had a stormy relationship with his engineer, and couldn't settle on a design long enough for it to be implemented.
We have some records of batteries dating back far even to ancient Egypt, magnets can be found on the ground, the only real obstacle is making thin copper wire reliably I guess.
It's easy to make a proof of concept electric motor. It's far more difficult to make a useful one.
And then, of course, you need a source of electricity to use them in the first place, whereas the steam engine just needed heat and water.