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One Good Turn by Witold Rybczynski
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One Good Turn

by Witold Rybczynski

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I'm not quite sure where this book came from. I reached into a box while unpacking, looked down and though "Now why would I ever have this?" I still don't know, it's one of the few mystery books that have shown up over the years. It is a short book, less than 150 pages, with several well drawn diagrams and even a picture glossary of tools to refer to as you read.

I was surpisingly drawn into it, considering its about tools, and I don't have much of a fit-it-up bone in my body. I'm more of the tear it down and look pleadingly at my boyfried to put it back together type.

The author starts by giving us a reason why he felt compelled to research the screw and screwdriver of all things. He then walks us through a good chunk of his research as he looks for the origins (which was suprisingly tricky). Finally, he walks us backwards through time through all the various stages and uses of the screw(driver). I would have prefered to start at the beginning and work our way to modern times, so it was a bit confusing for me jumping backwards but I can understand why he wrote that way.

An interesting book to keep mmy occupied for an afternoon...lovely sketches throughout as well. ( )
  jasmyn9 | Aug 31, 2009 |
QI type discussion on the origins and development of the screw etc. All to down to your landed gentry looking after themselves. Wonderful detailed case study on unintentional consequence- better screws led to better lathes that lead to factories long before the Manchester revolution. Read and do a Steven Fry. ( )
  ablueidol | Apr 28, 2009 |
Screwdrivers > History/Screws > History
  Budz888 | Jun 1, 2008 |
It is hard to fill 140 pages with a history and evolution of screws and the screwdriver. The screw appears late in the Middle Ages but in nearly perfect form. The only changes are a switch to machine production during the industrial revolution and the variation at its point (pointed instead of flat) and head of a screw (Phillips instead of Robertson). One feels the text's origin as a magazin article. The result languishes between an expanded magazin article and a full book treatment. Rybczynski should have fleshed out the sketches of Archimedes and the pioneers of the screwdriver industry Jesse Ramsden, Henry Maudslay, Peter L. Robertson, Henry F. Phillips. Some numbers about the current world-wide production and use of screws might have been interesting. What is the quantitative relationship between nails and screws? What is the impact of the recent trend to glue things together on the screw industry?

Instead, we follow Rybczynski in his heuristic and trivia filled discovery of the history of the screw. He start with the OED whose earliest mention of the English term happens not to be actually the first one. Rybczynski finds earlier quotes (I wonder if the OED has corrected this in the mean time.). Switching to French, he discovers even earlier mentions of the tourne-vis. This seems to satisfy him, although I immediately thought about Renaissance Italy. Rybczynski eventually arrives there too, after a roundabout via German armor, firearms and Dürer etchings. Overall, there is good pictorial and text support for screws and screwdrivers around the middle of the 15th century. The inventor of the first screw will forever remain in the clouds.

Rybczynski also shows that the use of large-scale screws to in presses and water management was well established since Archimedes and even dating back to Babylon. Small screws were too laborious to make (as the grooves had to be manually filed) to be practical. Although this argument does not hold in case of buttons which were also invented only in the middle ages. Clasps and wooden joints seem to have fulfilled their needs. The screw's breakthrough only came with the widespread use of precision machines (firearms, clocks, ...). Rybczynski only glimpses at the Canadian, British and American screw pioneer inventors in a few pages. These lesser known mechanical genies deserved fuller treatments. A look at non-English inventors is missing too.

Overall, a quick, diverting read about an uncommon topic that leaves a curious reader stranded midway in an interesting story. Well, if you want an exhaustive treatment of the subject by Rybczynski, you're screwed. ( )
  jcbrunner | May 28, 2008 |
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This all starts with a telephone call from David Shipley, an editor at the New York Times.
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Wikipedia in English (5)

One Good Turn (book)

Robertson screwdriver

Screw

Screw-cutting lathe

Screwdriver

Book description

Amazon.com (ISBN 0684867303, Paperback)

In 1999, an editor of the New York Times Magazine approached Witold Rybczynski, the well-known student of architecture and urban design, and asked him to write a short essay on the best and most useful common tool of the past millennium. Rybczynski took the assignment, but when he began to look into the history of the items in his workshop--hammers and saws, levels and planes--he found that almost all of them had pedigrees that extended well into antiquity. Nearly ready to admit defeat, he asked his wife for ideas. Her answer was inspired: "You always need a screwdriver for something."

True enough. And, Rybczynski discovered, the screwdriver is a relative newcomer in humankind's arsenal of gadgetry, an invention of the late European Middle Ages and the only major mechanical device that the Chinese did not independently invent. Leonardo da Vinci got to it early on, of course, as he did so many other things, designing a number of screw-cutting machines with interchangeable gears. Still, it took generations for the screw (and with it the screwdriver and lathe) to come into general use, and it was not until the modern era that such improvements as slotted and socket screws came into being.

Rybczynski's explorations into that lineage, here expanded to book length, are highly entertaining, and sure to engage readers interested in the origins of everyday things. --Gregory McNamee

(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:51 -0400)

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