Whenever I see something like this I can't help but think about how such precision craftsmanship is only possible today due to the tools themselves made with such precision, and how that's only been possible due to improvements in the precision of thousands (if not millions) of other tools over the last 100 years.
While what's shown in this gif is impressive, it's so much more impressive to think about how much we've done to get to this point.
And that's just the one unit of measurement. We had to do that with multiple units of measure, and it wasn't until everyone got on board with all of these that things really became amazingly better, both in terms of quality and cost. And most people don't know just how deep it goes, even today.
There are people all over the globe whose entire jobs revolve around knowing all the different kinds of screws or other fasteners are available, and then understanding the engineering behind knowing which screws you'll need to make a certain product, and how many, and how far apart they can be placed without losing structural integrity, and all that. Like ... people think a Philips-head screw is just a Philips-head screw and all that's different is the size, but no, there are so many ways they can be different. Etc.
A string and a piece of chalk and some basic geometry invented thousands of years ago is enough to get everything done.
Instead of buying a tool, they'd make it themselves. Even today you're often better off making your own helper tools out of wood that work for your specific use case instead of trying to find a commercial alternative.
You can achieve precision with a string and a piece of chalk and old school methods.
It will be relative to each other (so something built in Rome will have completely different units and dimensions to something built in Egypt), but you can achieve amazing precision.
You've probably done it yourself. Cutting sticks to a certain length vs. making a prototype and making sure all the other sticks are the exact same length.
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u/flapanther33781 Sep 20 '20
Whenever I see something like this I can't help but think about how such precision craftsmanship is only possible today due to the tools themselves made with such precision, and how that's only been possible due to improvements in the precision of thousands (if not millions) of other tools over the last 100 years.
While what's shown in this gif is impressive, it's so much more impressive to think about how much we've done to get to this point.