Excerpt from The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

Summary |  Excerpt |  Reviews |  Beyond the Book |  Readalikes |  Genres & Themes |  Author Bio

The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester

The Perfectionists

How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World

by Simon Winchester
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (4):
  • Readers' Rating (1):
  • First Published:
  • May 8, 2018, 432 pages
  • Paperback:
  • May 2019, 416 pages
  • Rate this book

About this Book

Print Excerpt


It would, in fact, be more than twenty years before Henry Royce came to make engines himself, and the motorcars to put them in. His first venture involved electricity, and was out of a workshop on Cooke Street in Manchester that manufactured and sold such newfangled devices as light switches, fuses, doorbells, and dynamos. He soon became moderately prosperous, married, bought a fair-size house in the suburbs, and embarked on the devotion of such spare time as he had to gardening and raising roses and fruit trees, a passion for the rest of his life.

Mechanical rather than electrical engineering was his true passion, though, and within a decade he took steps to incorporate the two, setting up a company named Royce Limited that produced a range of large-scale industrial electric cranes. The firm won a following and a fine reputation: its cranes were known to be both very well made and built with patented Royce-designed safety features that minimized the number of lethal accidents that were then plaguing the new world of Victorian highish-rise construction. Over the years his company flourished, even selling electric cranes to the Imperial Japanese Navy, and having one exactly copied by unscrupulous Japanese engineers, right down to its ROYCE LIMITED nameplate.

Around the turn of the century, a number of German and American companies suddenly entered the crane market, undercut the Royce prices, and nearly brought the company to its knees. Royce, in an early display of a case-hardened determination to make machinery of the highest quality whatever the pressure, insisted he would neither cut his costs nor trim his standards—and in time, the young company survived, stabilized, and gained a reputation for high-quality engineering, for precision products made beyond consideration of price.

Henry Royce was by now himself settled, stable, domesticated, and with money in the bank. His personal interest turned to automobiles. He was able to indulge himself—first, by buying, in 1902, a De Dion quadricycle, essentially two bicycles bolted side by side, with a small internal combustion engine suspended between them. France at the time had a near monopoly on the stripling car-making business, with firms such as De Dion-Bouton, Delahaye, Decauville, Hotchkiss et Cie, Panhard, and Lorraine-Dietrich producing small numbers of vehicles for a growing number of enthusiasts. The vocabulary reflects still the Gallic origins: words such as garage, chauffeur, sedan, coupe, and, indeed, automobile serving as reminders.

From the book:The Perfectionists by Simon Winchester. Copyright © 2018 by Simon Winchester. Reprinted courtesy of Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

Membership Advantages
  • Reviews
  • "Beyond the Book" articles
  • Free books to read and review (US only)
  • Find books by time period, setting & theme
  • Read-alike suggestions by book and author
  • Book club discussions
  • and much more!
  • Just $60 for 12 months or $20 for 3 months.
  • More about membership!

BookBrowse Book Club

  • Book Jacket
    The River Knows Your Name
    by Kelly Mustian
    A haunting Southern novel about memory and love, from the author of The Girls in the Stilt House.

Members Recommend

  • Book Jacket

    Girl Falling
    by Hayley Scrivenor

    The USA Today bestselling author of Dirt Creek returns with a story of grief and truth.

  • Book Jacket

    Jane and Dan at the End of the World
    by Colleen Oakley

    Date Night meets Bel Canto in this hilarious tale.

  • Book Jacket

    The Antidote
    by Karen Russell

    A gripping dust bowl epic about five characters whose fates become entangled after a storm ravages their small Nebraskan town.

Who Said...

Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering.

Click Here to find out who said this, as well as discovering other famous literary quotes!

Wordplay

Solve this clue:

T B S of T F

and be entered to win..

Your guide toexceptional          books

BookBrowse seeks out and recommends the best in contemporary fiction and nonfiction—books that not only engage and entertain but also deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.