alt Hacker NewsAuthor here. This is a sequel to my beam engine article: https://glinscott.github.io/beam-engine/.
I started digging into Watt's challenges getting an accurate cylinder bore for his pistons, and it spiraled out from there :).
The article covers some of the key techniques developed during the industrial revolution to measure and make incredibly precise parts. There are a lot of animations and interactive figures to explore how it works.
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Piston rings were really bad in the early days.
Remember, this was all iron, not steel. The mass production of steel didn't get going until the 1880s. It's amazing that railroads predate steel.
Interesting that many of the early steam mills used a steam engine to pump water into a water tower, which then drove a conventional water wheel to power the millworks.
These could really use a way to really pause everything so one can read the text without distracting animations.
Have you read "The Perfectionists" by Simon Winchester? Great book if you're into this stuff!
Armchair metrologist here. Did metalworkers back then use 16ths, or 12ths and 24ths? I'm familiar with the use of 1/12th lines ''' and multiples of 1/144th points ''''.
How was AI used when writing the article? Not implying anything, I haven't started reading it (yet).
Very cool! Though my ChemEng degree obligates me to say that the animation in the "steam" section should really show boiling all the time if the pressure gauge is indeed showing the pressure in the container. Though in reality you'd never heat water at below atmospheric pressure in a real engine, if you did it would be boiling at any temperature at or above the triple point, and below the critical point, so long as there is no air in there.