One Good Turn: A Natural History Of The Screwdriver And The Screw (2001) - Plot & Excerpts
Originally posted on my blog, Guiltless ReadingYou always need a screwdriver for something!The book in one sentence: Let me take you on a quest to find out why the screwdriver is the best tool of the millennium.My thoughts: I won One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw by Witold Rybczynski at a Christmas party (with some other goodies) and being the "read-anything" type of gal, I jumped into this one quite easily. This is so short (only a 143 pages) that I read it in two sittings.First thing, isn't that title rather cute? And doesn't the topic seem quite trivial? Really, who cares about the screwdriver? Which is precisely the point: how did it become such a permanent fixture in all our toolboxes? It really got me wondering ... so where did the screwdriver and screw originate? Was it the Chinese (like so many things?)When Rybczynski is asked to write the history of the most important tool of the last millennium, he couldn't decide what that tool was. Until his wife simply said: "You always need a screwdriver for something." And that's the germ of this book.One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw feels like being on a scavenger hunt! Rybczynski gamely lets us all tag along as he turns detective - poring over old books, manuscripts and museums, and following up on little leads. He has such an air of excitement about him that I couldn't help but enjoy myself!The history of the screwdriver and the screw is quite fascinating. My initial thought of the screw/screwdriver being invented by the Chinese was wrong - it is in fact the only major mechanical device that the Chinese did not independently invent!Some cool bits of info, and this is just a smattering of what Rybczynski digs up:- Archimedes had a water screw which was used for irrigation.- Leonardo daVinci has sketches of a screw making machine!- Screws were used in the 15th century to secure breastplates, backplates, and helmets on jousting armor. - Screws were used widely in firearms, particularly the matchlock.- Screws were individually made and extremely expensive to produce before the First Industrial Revolution. Job and William Wyatt developed a method of producing the screw in a machine that cut the slotted head first, then carved the helix. - P.L. Robertson first commercialized the socket-head screw but was stingy with his patents. In stepped Henry Phillips with the cruciform screw which were widely used in the automotive industry. (Yes, you guessed it, these guys are the namesakes of the screw types and screwdrivers.)The book is peppered with detailed drawings and has a full glossary of tools (and notes) in the back.Verdict: I will never look at the screw and the screwdriver as ordinary again. Fascinating, fun, and a satisfying read, great for trivia buffs and handymen (and women) alike.
If you've ever hung a door, planed wood, built a Morris chair that was custom-fit to a family member's dimensions--or even fantasized about doing so--this book is for you. Likewise, if you're an archaeologist well-versed in such riveting details (sorry) as the history of such ubiquitous and oft-encountered items as nails, then this, too, is the book for you. Why? Because it demonstrates how to write thoroughly, intelligently, and with passion about even the most quotidian of items: in this case, the screw and screwdriver.Challenged by an editor to compose an article featuring "the best tool of the Millennium," Rybczynski had to first determine which tool that might be. While presumably that short article is now a thing of the past, this small book (weighing in at less than 150 pages, excluding its scholarly endnotes) is a lovely rumination on that task. To be sure, this is no off-the-cuff, end-of-millennium rumination. The author credits the labor of three research assistants, numerous visits to museums, public and private archives, and a tremendous amount of actual work--all while making it appear seamless. While mindful not to spoil the ending (i.e., and not so much the what as the title reveals that, but the deeper question of whom we might accurately credit with that tool's invention), One Good Turn: A Natural History of the Screwdriver and the Screw is a well-crafted testament to innovation, curiosity, and human ingenuity. It's also a fun romp through history, working quickly backward from the present to antiquity. (At times, it brought to mind science detective James Burke's leaps, segues, and fascinating tangents in the Connections 2 series.) I provide an extended quote here as testimony to the considerable thought Rybczynski gave his topic. It is likewise indicative of his own innate curiosity and the adroitness with which he can handle both hand tools and words: Mechanical genius is less well understood and studied than artistic genius, yet it surely is analogous. "Is not invention the poetry of science?" asked E.M. Bataille, a French pioneer of the steam engine. "All great discoveries carry with them the indelible mark of poetic thought. It is necessary to be a poet to create." Nevertheless, while most of us would bridle at the suggestion that if Cezanne, say, had not lived, someone else would have created similar paintings, we readily accept the notion that the emergence of a new technology is inevitable or, at least, determined by necessity. My search for the best tool of the millennium suggests otherwise (p. 110).Read this book, and you'll consider it time well spent. Plus, you'll never look at your toolbox the same way again.
What do You think about One Good Turn: A Natural History Of The Screwdriver And The Screw (2001)?
I have picked up and put down this book several times before, but read it through quickly. It is FASCINATING (though you may not think the screwdriver and screw could be so) and absolutely delightful for the thinking and research process described. Though I've read other books by Rybczynski, I didn't appreciate what an excellent researcher he (and let's be honest, the team of researchers noted in the back of the book) is. Many of the paths Rybczynski follows begin with close examination of the tools or presence of screws in images from the 1400s and later, which he follows backward all the way to Archimedes. The narrative felt very much like a detective novel after a certain point.If you read this, please note that there is a Glossary of Tools in the back of the book, which I did not see referred to from the main text. I may have missed it, but I truly did not see a footnote or reference to the glossary, which contains images of tools mentioned that one may not be familiar with. I wish I'd noticed this before the end of the book!
—Stephany
For a rather modern tool, it takes a good amount of hunting to track down the history and origin of the screwdriver.It opens with an account of his being asked to do an article on the tool of the millennium. This is somewhat complicated by his hunt through his wood-working tools to find those that aren't millennia old. To be sure, there are some. Like the brace.And as he finally realizes, the screwdriver, which indeed seems to be 18th century.It takes some hunting. A French reference, older than the oldest English one by half a century, talked about the tournevis. English ones were called "turnscrews" -- a direct translation -- for a while, though the author, who ran across the assertion, didn't really believe it until he stumbled on a page of such "turnscrews" in a catalog.There were screws in the medieval era, in armor and machinery. Not many. Usually the screwdriver would be improvised, probably. Even in the early modern era, screws were so difficult to make by hand that they were not sold in lots but individually; the rarity of usage argued against a dedicated tool. Still, like the button-and-buttonhole, the screw as a fastener seems to come from this era. A writer talked of how they were better in making a bellows than nails were.But in the chapter on lathes -- which are used to make screws as well as using them -- he found what might be the first screwdriver. German, not French, and used to adjust the cutter on the lathe. A useful tool, especially when you want to make regulating screws, which require great precision in cutting, and as soon as they were made, spread out through many, many, many applications for measurement.It also goes into the importance of industrialization for their spread, and the invention first the Robertson and then the Phillips head screw.The last chapter talks about such screws as the Romans used. There was no reason why they couldn't have invented the screw as fastener, but they didn't. They used screws in presses -- olive presses, for instance -- in a form that would later appear as the printing press. And Archimedes, of course, invented the water screw. It feels a little tacked on, but it does have interesting stuff.
—Mary Catelli
Another rather odd book. I never expected to read a book on the history of the Screwdriver or indeed the screw.It is well written and remarkably readable, but it does go off topic a little in parts, The book attempts to trace the history of the screwdriver but becomes and book about the screw. Of course the two items are linked, where you have a screw you will find a device for removing it, but it has never occurred to me the science in a screw. Until reasonably recently screws were HANDMADE. Can you imagine??? OF course this made them extremely expensive. This was a simple thing but is a great example of the revelations in the book. Read it and learn!
—Yvonne
