Will Wiles

Just So Stories

Exactly: How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

By

William Collins 395pp £25 order from our bookshop

In one episode of the adult cartoon Rick and Morty, drunken scientist, Rick, derides his grandson, Morty, for imagining that he can put up shelves using his ‘sad, naked caveman eyeball’ and a ‘bubble of air’ – that is, using a spirit level. He decides to demonstrate ‘true level’, and uses a variety of arcane devices to even out a square of the garage floor to improbable flatness. Stepping, for the first time ever, onto a ‘truly level’ surface, Morty’s reaction is close to rapture, and when he is dragged back out of the square, he is anguished: ‘Everything is crooked! Reality is poison!’

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