A deep dive into the world of making things that means you’ll never look at your kettle in quite the same way again

It’s some measure of the extent of urbanisation that the bookends to our day may not be birdsong but the sound of a kettle as the water in it reaches boiling point. That “tock” is made by a miniature device, a small disc consisting of alternating strips of two different metals. When exposed to heat, the metals expand at different rates, the disc gradually curves, and a switch is tripped, cutting off electricity to the kettle. Few of us know this; we write odes to nightingales, not thermostats, even though it is the latter that provides our morning soundtrack, those sonic notches that mark the passing of each day. Tock, tock, tock.

I thought little about those metallic notes until I read Tim Minshall’s new book, an ambitious exploration of the world of manufacturing. In it, he examines the myriad things that surround us, from transistors to ice-cream: the intricate, ingenious ways in which they are made, then shuttled around the world to reach our doorstep. For Minshall, manufacturing has been overlooked and undervalued, with perilous consequences. He writes that it “has become like a sewage system: essential for our lives, yet out of mind until things go wrong”.