Overview

Machine tools were the instruments of industrialization. They enabled the first capitalists to mass-produce inexpensive, quality goods. They also allowed the industrial nations to eradicate many deadly diseases and to become the dominant economic and political forces in the world. These tools would also change forever the concept of human labor.

Background

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) shocked the nineteenth-century Victorians when he explained one of the most important evolutionary periods in humankind's history. In The Descent of Man Darwin described how our ancestors descended from the trees, our original home, to walk upright on the ground. This was the pivotal moment in the development of our species. Standing upright not only increased our locomotion, but it would eventually free our hands and allow us to become the premier tool-using species...