For a British analogy, Winchester is a kind of David Attenborough of the engineering world. Reading the audiobook himself, he shares the same gentle British tone of old-worldliness and authority, unveiling the story of man’s machine world just for you.
Initially, he says, the story of precision and mechanisation is indistinguishable from an ode to Britain:
We are acquainted with leading figures of the Industrial Revolution, the minds behind the steam engine, the standardised screw, locks and pulleys and more, that preceded and then fed the British Empire’s zenith and allowed her shipyards to support the navy that once ruled the world. Even after her zenith, Britain birthed the jet engine (arguably jointly with Germany2). (Exactly makes for a wonderful companion to James Dyson’s memoir Invention: A Life, Dyson being a British descendent of this British tradition of tinkering and invention.) Some time in the early 20th century (and in some respects much earlier) the Americans pick up the baton in manufacturing and technology. Where the Rolls-Royce was the epitome of precision manufacturing no expenses spared, Henry Ford brought the assembly line and mass manufacturing to the world. And where it was a plucky general who first proposed and demonstrated the power of interchangeable components in a French dungeon,3 the French Revolution put a halt to that. But it was Thomas Jefferson, witness to the experiment, who brought it to the New World and to the gun manufacturers of New England. And it is the Hubble telescope — that American fountain of knowledge — whose first $2bn iteration was ruined by a lens manufacturer who was out by a mere 1/50th of a human hair. Winchester ends his book in Japan, the Mecca of precision engineering, in a charming meditation on the Japanese blend of venerable human craftsmanship and the power of humanless manufacturing.
(Hat tip to Byrne Hobart.)
The American Precision Museum in Vermont is an interesting place, harking back to the time when New England was the cutting edge (literally) of American innovation. I visited in 2017 and again more recently. Post with pictures here:
https://chicagoboyz.net/archives/55781.html
American auto manufacturers were approached by William Demming in the 1960s, who would encourage them to use statistical process control to improve their products. The Big 3 were the only game in town, and people were buying everything they made, so they turned him away. Domestic quality continued to suck. Demming went to Japan. You know the rest of the story, as 50 years have passed, and American auto manufacturers are still playing catch up.
The baton has been passed to China:
https://asiatimes.com/2023/08/chinas-high-tech-field-of-dreams/
While we use AI for games, China runs it on high-end Huawei 5G stations to optimize their factories and transportation systems. They have 80% of all the 5G base stations in the world. They already have the most automated manufacturing sector in the world, and they are creating the Fourth Industrial revolution as we look on, still de-industrializing.
China has 26,000 miles of high-speed railway that runs at speeds up to 350 km/hr, and that connects all of China’s major cities. That is two-thirds of all the high-speed railway in the world. They are about to launch a 600 km/hr service.
And remember, each year they build 35 to 40% of all the commercial shipping made in the world. Their ship-building capacity is 200 times that of the US.
Is anyone in Wall Street or DC paying attention?