Originally Posted by
uscra112
One factoid I learned from a dozen years in the machine tool industry: The machine tool extends the reach of the craftsman by building the skill into the tool.
Imagine launching a payload to orbit. or building the power grid, or even making a usable automobile, with only hand tools.
The machine tool industry is small, almost minute compared to the oil industry, the steel industry, or Amazon and Walmart, but everything, EVERYTHING we depend on every day starts with machine tools. We owe our entire technology to the English and Scots pioneers, Maudslay, Murray, Bramah, Wilkinson, Whitworth, Fox and many others who created the industrial revolution by inventing precision measurement and "machines that make machines".