Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

by Simon Winchester

It is the mark of an instructed mind to rest assured with that degree of precision that the nature of the subject admits, and not to seek exactness when only an approximation of the truth is possible. —ARISTOTLE (384–322 BC), NICOMACHEAN ETHICS

The fate of human civilization will depend on whether the rockets of the future carry the astronomer’s telescope or a hydrogen bomb.

Perfection is the child of time. —BISHOP JOSEPH HALL, WORKS (1625)