id="u01f77cab-a896-5f2b-9ad9-34935c9f0f76">
William Collins
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2018
Copyright © Simon Winchester 2018
Cover images © Getty Images
Simon Winchester asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
Much of the material here relating to the Tohoku Tsunami of March 2011 is taken with permission from an essay by Simon Winchester in the New York Review of Books, November 9, 2017.
Image of space on title page by Yuriy Mazur/Shutterstock, Inc.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins
Source ISBN: 9780008241766
Ebook Edition © May 2018 ISBN: 9780008241797
Version: 2018-05-01
For Setsuko
And in loving memory of my father,
Bernard Austin William Winchester, 1921–2011,
a most meticulous man
These brief passages from works by the writer Lewis Mumford (1895–1990) might usefully be borne in mind while reading the pages that follow.
The cycle of the machine is now coming to an end. Man has learned much in the hard discipline and the shrewd, unflinching grasp of practical possibilities that the machine has provided in the last three centuries: but we can no more continue to live in the world of the machine than we could live successfully on the barren surface of the moon.
—THE CULTURE OF CITIES (1938)
We must give as much weight to the arousal of the emotions and to the expression of moral and esthetic values as we now give to science, to invention, to practical organization. One without the other is impotent.
—VALUES FOR SURVIVAL (1946)
Forget the damned motor car and build the cities for lovers and friends.
—MY WORKS AND DAYS (1979)
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
List of Illustrations
Prologue
Chapter 1: Stars, Seconds, Cylinders, and Steam
Chapter 2: Extremely Flat and Incredibly Close
Chapter 3: A Gun in Every Home, a Clock in Every Cabin
Chapter 4: On the Verge of a More Perfect World
Chapter 5: The Irresistible Lure of the Highway
Chapter 6: Precision and Peril, Six Miles High
Chapter 7: Through a Glass, Distinctly
Chapter 8: Where Am I, and What Is the Time?
Chapter 9: Squeezing Beyond Boundaries
Chapter 10: On the Necessity for Equipoise
Afterword: The Measure of All Things
Acknowledgments
A Glossary of Possibly Unfamiliar Terms
Bibliography
Index
About the Author
Also by Simon Winchester
Unless otherwise noted, all images are in the public domain.
Difference between Accuracy and Precision
John Wilkinson
Boulton and Watt steam engine
Joseph Bramah
Henry Maudslay
Maudslay’s “Lord Chancellor” bench micrometer (courtesy of the Science Museum Group Collection)
Flintlock on a rifle
Thomas Jefferson
Springfield Armory “organ of muskets”
Joseph Whitworth
Crystal Palace
Whitworth screws (courtesy of Christoph Roser at AllAboutLean.com)
“Unpickable” Bramah lock
Henry Royce
Rolls-Royce