![]() ![]() The first prototypes leaked copious amounts of steam and weren’t very efficient. This expert working of metal is traced back to James Watt and his development of the steam engine. This extreme flatness could be achieved only because humans had mastered precise manufacturing and so, his fascination with the subject began. The only way to separate them was by sliding them. As Winchester explains, the blocks were so perfectly flat that their surfaces bonded at a molecular level. ![]() Then his father slid them apart with a flick of his wrist. ![]() Young Simon was challenged to separate two blocks placed one on top of the other. As a 10-year-old, he watched in awe as his father lifted them from their velvet case. These blocks, carefully ground to exact specifications, could be stacked in different ways to make accurate lengths for measuring. He tells us of the moment in his boyhood when his father brought a series of small metallic blocks - gauge blocks - to his London home. ![]()
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