One Good Turn
A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
by Witold Rybczynski · first published 2000
80% recommend20% neutral
"One Good Turn is a story starring Archimedes, who invented the water screw and introduced the helix, and Leonardo, who sketched a machine for carving wood screws. It is a story of mechanical discovery and genius that takes readers from Ancient Greece to Victorian Glasgow, from weapons design in the Italian Renaissance to car design in the age of American industry. Rybczynski writes an ode to the screw, without which there would be no telescope, no microscope - in short, no enlightenment science. The screwdriver, perhaps the last hand tool in a world gone cyber, represents nothing less than t
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There's a lovely little book called "One Good Turn" by Witold Rybczynski subtitled 'A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw' A pure delight for those interested in such things like me.
on “List of screw drives” ↗There's a great little book "One Good Turn" by Canadian architect, professor and writer Witold Rybczynski where he points out that "A Robertson screw can always be unscrewed".
on “Robertson vs. Torx screw drives (2021)” ↗Great read: One Good Turn: A Natural History... https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684867303?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar... A history of the screw. Really interesting around how it was developed. Some machining techniques are far older than…
on “Cold restart whole system after total outage” ↗HN would probably be interested in another book by the author, Witold Rybczynski: One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw (https://www.amazon.com/dp/0684867303). It's born out of a writing prompt for a newspaper article - what is the most important tool (for construction…
on “Give Us Something to Look At: Why ornament matters in architecture” ↗…year I’ve started going through his collection of popular-science paperbacks. Done: QED, Richard Feynman. Lectures on explaining quantum electrodynamics but with no more math than geometry. Currently: One Good Turn: A natural history of the screwdriver and the screw, Witold Rybczynski. The discourse goes into his references in depth. It has yielded an excellent list of museums to visit. On deck: Impossibility:…
on “Ask HN: What are you reading?” ↗I'm not sure there's any really good book that furthers this argument (possibly The Perfectionists or One Good Turn?) but it sort of becomes obvious when you read about Maudsley (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Maudslay and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw-cutting_lathe) and Wilkinson (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Wilkinson_(industrialist)…
on “Oldest cave art found” ↗