Watches and clocks strike me as having been for many centuries, the first true precision machining. Maybe I'm missing something I don't know. One thing that got me into this line of thought. I almost hate to admit years ago on Pawn Stars some guy brought in a marine chronometer. This gave Rick Harrison a chance to go off on a spiel about history that he may or may not just have learned. I didn't realize that a really accurate clock was needed for accurate longitudinal readings while far at sea. During his spiel, they flashed photos of the inards of some of these devices. OMG, precision gears, cut out of thin brass plate. Obviously someone knew how to make that stuff back when because there it was.

I was curious, I looked it up, those things could be accurate to within a second a day. In the 1700s.

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1986 300SDL, 362K
1984 300D, 138K