The Perfectionists: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

by Simon Winchester

the Antikythera mechanism, for the island, halfway between Crete and the southern tendrils of mainland Greece,

Babylonian astronomers, who were the most astonishingly able watchers of the skies, had calculated that lunar eclipses were usually separated by 223 full moons.

Iron Bridge of Coalbrookdale

the Portsmouth Block Mills would turn out the required one hundred thirty thousand blocks each year, one finished block every minute of every working day, and yet it required a crew of just ten men to operate