A look behind Inventions by Arnold PaceyA look behind Inventions by Arnold Pacey
Fine Technology:
a refined component, or lynchpin of adaptive, 
inventive engineering. This sort of fine technology --a refinement in related tools--is the very core of specialization, in that survival technology allows for a selected group of crafts people to focus and thus know more about materials and facets of repair for finely crafted tools and the associated techniques for mastery of such arts as metallurgy, hydrology, surveying, architecture and building, or mechanics.
Among the earliest fine devices.
While not the earliest example, windmills are an archetype -- that is a symbol-- of the very apex of fine technology. Nantucket windmill, built on the Dutch design, preserved from the 1700s. [JVS,1998].
Two rotary gears mesh at right angles; 
such a perpendicular arrangement of gears transfers motion from one direction to a different orientation and is an example of fine technology.
"When looking in detail at the the institutions which influenced technological development, one should note the patronage sometimes extended by the wealthy or the powerful to individual craft workers, and one should take account of the role of observatories, such as the ones at Baghdad or Kaifeng (China), in providing scientific and technical advice to governments."
p. 33.
"Technology was always to some extent involved in the dreams
and fantasies of a society or its rulers."
Other kinds of inspired thoughts with a technical outcome:
Fine technology is a term of historian Donald Hill that "denotes small but relatively sophisticated mechanisms of which we may note two kinds, one connected with gardens and the other with astronomy."
p. 34.
These were technologies that allow for some predictive change or a capacity to predict changes more accurately.
These adaptive mechanisms led eventually to water raising wheels and turbines and weight driven clocks and watches.
Current examples of fine technology.
Current threads in existing tool webs:
By analogy and application of Hill's ideas about "fine technology," we can look at 19th century developments in dynamos or radios and 20th century developments and suggest that thermostats, diodes, transistors, cyclotrons, and lasers, are examples of the refinements essential for technical innovation. All are examples of fine technology and the role of components in developing new applications.
Can you discover more examples of fine technology in the Kaku book and, also, in the last chapters of Pursell or Pacey?
Make a list of these refinements that you find and their page numbers:
Bring your lists to class to compare.
Artificial Intelligence | Robots | mechanization
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| Tools of Toil: what to read. | ||
| Tools are historical building blocks of technology. | ||
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