Comment by cyberax
6 hours ago
Dude, wtf are you talking about? 1750 is freaking high-tech. They had large scale iron casting, gunpowder production, precision engineering good enough to make a clock that can provide accurate time after going around the world, most of the modern math foundations, telescopes, and even steam power.
Clockmaking goes way back, but for a long time was off in its own technological niche. People with tiny files working brass made clocks by hand. The first mass produced clocks appeared in the late 1700s.
Precision didn't come to iron and steel until Maudsley's lathe, around 1800. It can be seen at the Science Museum, London. It looks like a modern lathe, but is quite different from its predecessors. It's on display, but not emphasized, and few people know its importance.
Today we think of engineering as a continuum, where you pull the technology you need from mechanics, electronics, materials science, and chemical engineering to get something done. That's a modern concept. For most of history, those groups barely talked. For a long time, there was a huge distance between science and engineering. Science was sort of an aristocratic hobby, and engineering was done by people who worked in forges and shops. It wasn't until the era of the steam engine that both sides started talking much. They had to figure out thermodynamics to get steam engines to work efficiently.