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Across the twentieth century, achievable engineering tolerance fell by roughly three orders of magnitude. At every stage, from wrung gauge blocks to laser interferometry, the limit was what could be measured, not cut.
Since 1968, one log-log chart has forced every capacitor, battery and flywheel onto the same two axes. Most claimed breakthroughs move along that trade-off; very few push its empty upper-right frontier outward.
Henry Maudslay's lathe is remembered for cutting better screws. What mattered more is that its leadscrew was accurate enough to cut the leadscrew of a more accurate lathe.