Witold Rybczynski. One Good Turn (2000)

     Witold Rybczynski. One Good Turn (2000) An extended essay on the origins of the screw driver and the screw. This is the only Western device not also invented independently elsewhere in the world. Rybczynski writes gracefully, and lets the discussion flow and ramble in the same way his researches did. The result is a pleasant and informative read, which among other things reminds us that the many of the most significant features of our civilisation are ignored because they are ubiquitous. The screw and screw driver have made manufacture of all kinds possible; and the screw-making machine was one of the earliest examples of industrialisation, which is marked not so much by the proliferation of power driven machinery as by the transfer of control of the work piece from the human hand to the machine. Skills come to inhere in the machine, not in the worker, a fact that has had huge consequences socially as well as economically. But Rybczynski does not explore these implications of his little book. He contents himself with tracing the development of a most useful device, and some related ones. He leaves the rumination upon consequences to the reader. *** (2003)