Comment by FredPret
13 days ago
It'd be interesting if we could draw up a family tree of tool fabrication for any object.
The root object would be two rocks brought together in a bang heard 'round the world, then perhaps some sharpened sticks, all the way up to a Colchester lathe somewhere in Victorian England and the machinery that made whatever object we're looking at.
For the machine shop there are the "Gingery" books:
https://gingerybookstore.com/
which is a multi-volume series based on the fact that a lathe is the only tool in a machine shop which can replicate itself, so the first volume has one make an aluminum casting foundry in one's backyard, the second how to use it to make a lathe, then one can use the rough-cast lathe to improve itself (or make a better lathe), and from there make the entirety of a machine shop.
Blacksmithing as noted in the original article is unique in that it is self-sufficient in a way that few other processes are, and downright elemental in what one needs.
Another book which touches on this sort of things is Verne's _The Mysterious Island_ which has a couple of escaped Civil War prisoners making things from essentially first principles:
https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1268
Less on the nose are _Robinson Crusoe_ and _The Swiss Family Robinson_, though those have starter kits in the form of flotsam and jetsam (rather more than that for the latter).
appropedia.org has a lot of instructions on how to build things, I don't thing a "progression tree" exists, but it is a place to start!