It might be a jump from trailer wheels to clocks, but an interesting read, to me anyway, is Finding Longitude, Neli Armstrong. It is the story go the search and discovery of a method to determine longitude while navigating at sea. I feel certain that the inventor would have earned a "Tool of the Week" T-Shirt!!!
Not to ruin the mystery of the book, I will only say the solution involved some very precision filing.
The author of the book is Dava Sobel; Neil (not Neli) Armstrong wrote the foreword.
Her biography of Galileo, Galileo's Daughter, is well worth a read as well.
Bookmarks