Early in his career, Joseph Whitworth decided that the meas- urements he was using were not accurate enough. He was an engineer who designed and built things to solve problems and make work easier, things like knitting machines and horse-drawn street sweepers. But what he enjoyed making most were precision machining tools, the machines that made machines: lathes for rounding, planes for smoothing, drills for making holes, shears for slicing, and machines to make screws and machines to measure.
Joseph was on his way to becoming one of the greatest mechani- cians — those skilled in the designing, constructing, and repairing of machines — of all time.
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