-[Darryl] Yes.

If anything's missing it's because you probably--

- [Destin] What are you talking about?

- You probably misplaced it.

- Hey it's me Destin.

Welcome back to Smarter Every Day.

So this is my dad,

and everybody's gonna talk about

in the comments how ugly we are.

Let's just get that outta the way.

- Chip off the old block.

- We're ugly.

- It ain't gonna get no better.

- We know it.

He knows how to measure things.

He's been a metrologist for years

and years and years, right?

- Yes.

- Yeah, what things have you measured?

- All kinds of things.

- Yeah?

- You name it,

just this week I measured things that go into space

and things that go down deep in the ocean.

- Just this week?

- Just this week.

- And that's a metrologist does, right?

It's the study of measuring things.

So, when I was growing up,

this is the kind of stuff I would play with

in the garage.

These are micrometers,

that's a really old lathe over there.

These are things that kind of shape the way I think,

and I read a lot of books back in the day,

and I'm basically making this video

because I want you to see it.

It's the dawn of precision.

You taught me all this stuff,

and there's a guy named Joseph Whitworth.

- Mm-hmm, we're standing on his shoulders right now, right?

- Right, well I mean like,

you like surface plates don't you?

- Oh yeah.

- Do you know who made surface plates?

- Who made em?

I guess Mr. Starrett did.

- No, Joseph Whitworth.

- Did he?

- Yeah.

- Did he really?

- Yeah, so today on Smarter Every Day,

I would like to go on an adventure

to learn about this guy,

Joseph Whitworth,

and basically I think you will enjoy this video.

- Okay.

- So our story starts here

at the Tennessee State Museum.

There's a really cool thing here,

something I've cared about my entire life.

It's a special weapon that was used in the Civil War

called a Whitworth rifle.

Okay this is what we're here for,

this is a Whitworth.

This represents the proliferation of the idea

of modern manufacturing precision.

This is a weapon that was designed in England

by a guy named Joseph Whitworth.

The scope is off to the side

so I don't really know how they fire this thing.

Look at the end of the barrel here.

You can see that it's not a circle

like most rifles are at the end of their barrel.

This is a hexagonal bullet.

Now the interesting thing about that

is it's a hexagonal helical bullet.

If you think about it,

how do you make a hexagonal hole in metal,

and then how do you twist that at a certain rate?

The answer is extreme manufacturing precision.

So there was a bullet at the museum,

but the cool thing about the South

is you can pick up the phone and call people

like Preston who owns nashvillerelics.com,

and you have a Whitworth bullet?

- [Preston] I do.

- [Destin] So your thing is Civil War relics, right?

Like you've got all the-- - Yes.

- [Destin] You buy and sell the stuff, right?

- Absolutely.

- [Destin] But, is your Whitworth for sale?

- Not yet.

(laughter)

- [Destin] Well what's the deal here?

You found this right?

- I found that one.

- [Destin] Okay, so it has sentimental value to you.

- [Preston] It does.

I've never actually sold anything that I found.

- [Destin] Really?

So what's the story with this?

This is what you'd call a drop?

- [Preston] This was a dropped bullet,

it was not fired.

It was found along the second day's battle lines

at the Battle of Nashville.

Basically it would've been dropped on December 16, 1864.

- [Destin] Really?

You can peg it down to the day?

- You can peg it down to that day.

- So what's so special about the Whitworth bullet,

the hexagon right?

- The hexagon,

a lot of the Whitworth's that came through

were the round conical type shells.

You didn't see a lot of the hexagon type guns

come through,

and it's quite rare to dig one

and to find one in dropped great condition

is kinda neat to find.

- [Destin] So why did the sharp shooters of the day

prefer the Whitworth?

- Very accurate.

- [Destin] Really?

Did you know they actually made artillery pieces

that have the hex?

- I did, I did.

I'd seen some of those shells.

I've never seen the actual cannon,

but I'd seen some of the shells.

- [Destin] I recently went to a civil war cannon shoot,

and while some people were there on the field

trying to knock down barrels with their cannons,

there was this one guy that was absolutely drilling

whatever he aimed at.

How long did it take you to make this Mike?

- [Mike} It took me a couple years.

The planning and arranging stage

took longer than the actual making of it.

The making of it was about a year.

- [Destin] So the whole purpose of this

is that you have an increased roll rate,

so you have a more stabilized projectile right?

- Correct.

- Wow, that's amazing.

Okay let's get the camera set up.

- [Man] That's perfect.

- Is that it?

Oh that's cool.

That's really cool.

That's gonna work.

- [Mike] It looks good doesn't it?

- [Destin] It really does.

Okay here we go,

Whitworth 600 meters,

yards, yards.

600 yards.

- [Mike] Whitworth three powder ready to fire?

Fire!

(cannon boom)

(explosion)

(explosion flying through the air)

(explosion)

(explosion)

- [Destin] Did you hit it?

- Yeah looks like I skimmed the bullseye

at about nine o'clock.

- [Destin] Really?

Oh holy cow dude!

We're talkin' about 600 yards?

- Yes.

- That's insane.

So here it is right here.

- Aw man.

- Oh my goodness.

- Look at how aggressive that rotation is.

- Whoa! - Wow!

- [Destin] Each one of those lands

represents 60 degrees of rotation,

so what we can do is we can go back

and we figure out where one is in polar coordinates,

and as it rotates we can actually calculate

the roll rate and the distance.

And we can calculate the distance

or the muzzle velocity,

based on the length of the round itself.

(cannon firing)

- Whitworth was an engineer.

He developed a lot of machining,

unique machining abilities to make flat planes,

to measure to a millionth of an inch,

those were all original things that Whitworth engineered.

- A millionth of an inch.

To show how this might work,

let's look at this.

So let's say we have a lever here,

and we have 10 inches here,

and we have one inch here to where we put a pencil

or something like that.

So if we move this thing 10 inches up top,

we get one inch of movement down here.

But what if we add another lever to this,

exactly like that one.

It's got a 10 inch fulcrum distance there,

one inch of movement.

Down here in the middle,

that's a hundred thousandths of an inch of movement.

Down here at the bottom,

it's barely even moving.

That's 10 thousandths of an inch.

We have to zoom in so you can even see it.

Okay it's one thing to understand these principles,

it's quite another to actually incorporate them

into the machinery of the day.

That's the magic of what Whitworth did,

and to explain how he did it,

I'm gonna kick it over to a buddy of mine named Will.

He has a YouTube channel called Machine Thinking.

He actually went to the U.K. and shows exactly

what Whitworth did to kick precision manufacturing

into high gear.

- [Will] Thanks Destin,

though it does seem incredible,

Whitworth did make a machine that could measure

down to a millionth of an inch.

To make a machine this accurate and precise

he did something amazing.

His machine had a micrometer screw

with 20 threads per inch,

which acted on the work piece

that had a worm wheel with 200 teeth

on the end of that shaft.

In turn, the shaft had a dial divided 250 times.

So 20 times 200 times 250 gives you a resolution

of one millionth of an inch.

Whitworth was able to show

even a momentary human touch on the workpiece

was detectable by this machine.

Now this was before the times of

environmentally controlled rooms,

so I'm certain he was unable to get those same measurements

day to day,

but it does show he was able to measure

to accuracies far beyond what anyone else was doing

at the time.

In fact, Whitworth is credited for introducing the thou,

a one thousandths of a inch of measurement,

and he could easily and regularly work

to that kind of precision or beyond.

But you can't make a machine measuring close

to millionths of an inch from just anywhere.

There's a whole chain of important precursors

to make something like that.

Whitworth helped invent or improve those as well,

probably the most important being the surface plate.

The surface plate is simply a piece of cast iron

or later granite,

which is incredibly flat and serves as your reference

for all precision.

Whitworth helped popularize the method

for making surface plates by scraping and lapping

three pieces of cast iron together.

The only plane that has come

in between three or more surfaces

has to be one that is practically perfectly flat,

and it's from those flat surface plates

that Whitworth could transfer that precision

into other tools or machines

like his millionth of an inch machine

or cannons or rifles,