Sublime

Even as I thought about larger and more complex objects – diggers, skyscrapers, factories, tunnels, electrical grids, cars, satellites, and so on – again and again, I came back to the same seven foundational innovations. We join things together: the nail. We need something that rotates or revolves: the wheel. We need power, and technology that can

When Charles Babbage, early in the Nineteenth Century, attempted to build the world’s first large calculating machine, he made the parts of wood and promptly discovered the importance of Internal Friction. Briefly, his machine wouldn’t go—and he couldn’t Push It hard enough to Make It Go without breaking it (see Pushing On The System, Chapter 11).

wooden moldboard ploughs with curved shares made from nonbrittle iron, multitube seed drills, cranks, rotary winnowing fans, wheelbarrows, and percussion drills

These powered tools turn us from laborers to task-managers, steering and guiding the forces to do useful work.

Our most important mechanical inventions are not machines that do what humans do better, but machines that can do things we can’t do at all. Our most