One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw - Hardcover

Rybczynski, Witold

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0743208498 ISBN 13: 9780743208499

Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd, 2000

Synopsis

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.

About this title

Review:

In 1999, an editor of the New York Times Magazine approached Witold Rybczynski, the well-known student of architecture and urban design, and asked him to write a short essay on the best and most useful common tool of the past millennium. Rybczynski took the assignment, but when he began to look into the history of the items in his workshop--hammers and saws, levels and planes--he found that almost all of them had pedigrees that extended well into antiquity. Nearly ready to admit defeat, he asked his wife for ideas. Her answer was inspired: "You always need a screwdriver for something."

True enough. And, Rybczynski discovered, the screwdriver is a relative newcomer in humankind's arsenal of gadgetry, an invention of the late European Middle Ages and the only major mechanical device that the Chinese did not independently invent. Leonardo da Vinci got to it early on, of course, as he did so many other things, designing a number of screw-cutting machines with interchangeable gears. Still, it took generations for the screw (and with it the screwdriver and lathe) to come into general use, and it was not until the modern era that such improvements as slotted and socket screws came into being.

Rybczynski's explorations into that lineage, here expanded to book length, are highly entertaining, and sure to engage readers interested in the origins of everyday things. --Gregory McNamee

Review:

Paul Challen

"The Toronto Star"

"One Good Turn" is a good, short read in the classic Rybczynksi mode -- an ordinary thing, explained extraordinarily.

M. R. Montgomery

"The New York Times Book Review"

What Rybczynski sees is that everything that requires mechanical precision, and that includes the instrumentation of modern science, rises out of the perfection of the simple screw and the complex machinery required to manufacture these indispensable items.

Paul Challen "The Toronto Star""One Good Turn" is a good, short read in the classic Rybczynksi mode -- an ordinary thing, explained extraordinarily.

M. R. Montgomery "The New York Times Book Review" What Rybczynski sees is that everything that requires mechanical precision, and that includes the instrumentation of modern science, rises out of the perfection of the simple screw and the complex machinery required to manufacture these indispensable items.

Paul Challen "The Toronto Star" "One Good Turn" is a good, short read in the classic Rybczynksi mode -- an ordinary thing, explained extraordinarily.

M. R. Montgomery The New York Times Book Review What Rybczynski sees is that everything that requires mechanical precision, and that includes the instrumentation of modern science, rises out of the perfection of the simple screw and the complex machinery required to manufacture these indispensable items.

Paul Challen The Toronto Star One Good Turn is a good, short read in the classic Rybczynksi mode -- an ordinary thing, explained extraordinarily.

About this edition

• Publisher: Simon & Schuster Ltd
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0743208498
• ISBN 13: 9780743208499
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176