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One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
One Good Turn A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw
Author: Witold Rybczynski
The Best Tool of the Millennium   From a da Vinci sketch to a Phillips, this is the story of the partnership between the screw and the screwdriver, the people who perfected it, and the innovations that made it possible.  The seeds of Witold Rybczynski's elegant and illuminating new book were sown by The New York Time...  more » whose editors asked him to write an essay identifying "the best tool of the millennium". 

Rybczynski once built a house using only hand tools.  His intimate knowledge of the toolbox, both its contents and its history, serves him beautifully on his quest. 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 the triumph of precision.  One of our finest cultural and architectural historians, Rybczynski renders a graceful, original, and engaging portrait of the tool that changed the course of civilization.

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ISBN-13: 9780684867304
ISBN-10: 0684867303
Publication Date: 9/11/2001
Pages: 176
Rating:
  • Currently 3.3/5 Stars.
 3
3.3 stars, based on 3 ratings
Publisher: Scribner/Simon & Schuster
Book Type: Paperback
Other Versions: Hardcover
Members Wishing: 0
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 reviewed One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw on + 14 more book reviews
A very readable survey of a lot of technological history, with anecdotes and byways of research.


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