Folks who enjoyed this may appreciate Simon Winchester's recent book The Perfectionists, where he covers this method amongst other things. Core to the idea of perfection are machine tools, what we in software often refer to as a toolchain. The way the toolchain revolution allowed us to go from intricate one off clockwork to reliable longitude measurement, better locks, and industrialized machinery parallels compilers, operation systems, etc.
I thought he went rather quickly from some of the earliest processes (boring, for instance) to stuff that's so abstract as to be removed from anybody's practical experience (disregarding metrologists, of course) and then goes farther into philosophical matters than I found interesting.
I would have much more a book that stayed in the realm of machine tools for about half the content, covering the process of bootstrapping precision in the pre-electronic era.
An interesting third quarter could discuss the limits of precision in practical mass manufacturing and the ways we work within tolerances that are economical. The engine block and head of an internal combustion engine have a large and irregularly-shaped mating surface that's subjected to repeated heating and cooling cycles. How flat do they have to be for a gasket to seal them effectively?
The last quarter of the book could cover developments in the era of CNC, and talked about the interplay between electrical components (e.g. stepper motors) and mechanical components (e.g. lead screws, timing belts, etc) and what we gain and lose in using those type of processes. Boring a hole for example, remains more accurate than CNC'ing it on a mill because good control when one x or y approaches zero becomes difficult both mechanically and mathematically.
Anybody interested in this sort of thing might enjoy "How Round is your Circle", by the way.
